CHALLENGE
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Our client, a large Midwest U.S. electric and gas utility, was interested in capitalizing on the significant funding opportunities presented by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which passed in November of 2021. The IIJA appropriated $62 billion to the Department of Energy (DOE) designed to modernize and upgrade U.S. infrastructure.
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.
Creating or increasing the efficiency of an operational technology (OT) division for a company is no easy task. Corporations often seek operational technology consulting to effectively deploy operational technology to optimize the efficiency of day-to-day operations through careful planning and deployment of resources.
Operational Technology (OT) change management involves processes and decisions related to implementing asset changes that can be deployed in different configurations. For example, processes that involve change requests processes for emergency or exception change requests – all activities required to support change management.
Power utilities are seeking opportunities to identify and acquire renewable energy resources to assist the transition of power generation facilities. These acquisitions require strong and disciplined processes to respond to the dynamic energy landscape. The demand for clean energy requires organizations to explore options that align with their investment objectives and sustainability goals. From solar and wind, power utilities can unlock new opportunities through disciplined planning processes when exploring the acquisition of renewable energy resources. In this article, we present a case history that can help electric utility managers understand how to effectively assess the potential return on investment (ROI) for renewable energy resources and enhance ESG assets.
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.
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