June 2, 2008—Sweeping changes lie ahead in the power utilities industry, according to the latest Utilities Global Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The 2008 report, A World of Difference, marks the tenth anniversary of the annual survey of 118 senior executives in 37 countries and reveals a sector that is anticipating wide scale transformation in the decade ahead. The changes they predict include a different technological landscape and structure of the sector in the future.
There has been a big surge in expectations that a diverse range of generation technologies wind, solar, geothermal, combined heat and power, other forms of distributed generation and a range of combustible renewable and waste generation will have a significant impact on companies’ power markets in the next ten years.
The proportion of survey respondents anticipating that distributed generation will have the greatest impact has doubled from 24% just two years ago to 49% in this year’s survey. Even more striking, the proportion expecting solar power plants to have the greatest impact has risen from 20% to 54% in the same period.
Companies in these sectors also reinforce the importance of economic signals in shaping change in the power generation fuel mix and the potential for future changes to the sector’s structure.
For more information, see the PricewaterhouseCoopers Web site.
