CHALLENGE
Continue reading
A large US investor-owned utility’s Customer Solutions organization recently restructured, combining two Customer Solutions Innovation organizations. The utility wanted to align approaches and processes across these two organizations, adopt leading practices from other utilities and industries, and reassess the skillsets needed for the Customer Solutions Innovation employees. ScottMadden was engaged to help the utility evaluate the current state of the customers’ practice, align processes, and navigate emerging regulatory requirements related to Customer Solutions.
The board of directors of a Fortune 100 company wanted to better understand governance and controls around its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments. The company is recognized as an industry leader in many aspects of ESG, but the board was concerned that much of what was currently done on a voluntary basis could soon become mandatory and would face additional scrutiny. This sense was driven by pending SEC rulemaking on ESG disclosures, increased demand for ESG data from investors and creditors, and the company’s own public commitments in areas such as decarbonization.
Our client, a national developer, owner, and operator of utility-scale wind, solar, and battery storage assets recently completed a major acquisition. The purchase expanded their asset portfolio and project pipeline to include all renewable resource types (e.g., wind, solar, storage) across all U.S. markets. In the fast-growing renewables market, they faced several challenges, including persistent regulatory uncertainty, rising development costs, and tough competition.
A generation and transmission (G&T) electric co-op was receiving inquiries from its credit ratings agencies about its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts—with the most interest on the “E” as its ratings agencies indicated environmental performance has the greatest potential impact on long-term access to capital. Additionally, over the past several years, there was increasing member interest in environmental issues—specifically carbon emissions. Though the co-op had established and published carbon-emissions reduction targets and has long emphasized and established policies to ensure sound governance practices, its leaders recognized the topic of ESG is not going away; “so it is important for us to ground ourselves in the ESG issues most material to our stakeholders.”
Our client, a major US electric utility, announced an enterprise goal to deploy and integrate 10GW of solar to their generation mix by 2035. The company faced several challenges in meeting this target, including a significant interconnection queue backlog, high demand for renewable energy credits (RECs) from corporate customers, long project lead times, and a lack of internal capabilities to accommodate the significant increase in solar energy on the grid. ScottMadden developed a utility-scale solar strategy to help our client evaluate procurement methods, develop a land acquisition methodology, identify internal resource and capability gaps, and streamline internal processes.
To take advantage of an acquisition opportunity, our client, a power generation investment firm, contacted ScottMadden to support the diligence of an in-development utility-scale wind energy power plant. The asset had run into permitting issues and was at risk of being discontinued. Our client, who had extensive power generation permitting experience, hoped to buy the plant at a discount, resolve the issues, and divest the asset for a multiple of the original
cost. Our consultants were brought in to validate the bid price and guide the purchasing strategy.
Our client, a mid-sized vertically integrated electric utility, announced one of the most aggressive net-zero carbon emissions goals in the United States. The company embarked on a long-term resource planning effort to meet this goal while maintaining reliability and affordability. The client faced several common challenges in this effort, including the consideration of a multitude of options, technology readiness, context and suitability for their territory, and the absence of a regulatory mandate that would require them to pursue lowcarbon options. ScottMadden was engaged to facilitate a long-term resource strategy that could meet ambitious decarbonization goals while maintaining (or improving upon) today’s levels of reliability.
Sussex Economic Advisors is now part of ScottMadden. We invite you to learn more about our expanded firm. Please use the Contact Us form to request additional information.