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October 2017

In praise of perpetuity

National oil companies manifesto

Perpetuity is every national oil company’s mission. Their articles of incorporation proclaim that they must toil for future generations. While international operators can wander from one country to the next according to the circumstances and various regulatory frameworks of producing...
Utilities & alternative energy
August 2017

Energy Journal – Utilities

Perspectives on the Utilities Industry 2017

The energy industry, from oil and gas to utilities, is going through an unprecedented change. It’s a change similar to when the world moved from wood to coal, with the steam machine, or from coal to oil, when utilities centralized and the car industry took off early last century. Today, the shift...
Utilities & alternative energy
August 2017

Utilities’ contribution to national fiber development

How utilities and telecom operators can cooperate to accelerate fiber deployment

The ultra-broadband demand-supply balance remains an unsolved equationGlobally, the race for fiber infrastructure has been accelerating in the recent past. The number of countries that achieved 95 percent fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) coverage increased from 1 in 2012 to 6 in 2016. Similarly, the number...
Utilities & alternative energy
August 2017

Output-based regulation

Fields of innovation for energy-grid operators?

The regulatory environment in Europe is pushing network utilities to face new challenges that will heavily impact their operations. Regulators all over Europe are watching the tariff mechanism introduced in Great Britain, named RIIO, which is based on incentives, with interest. Many have plans to...
Utilities & alternative energy
May 2017

Agility in managing electricity grids: The case for

The rise in renewable energy has created unprecedented challenges for the planning and operation of an electricity grid that was built on the assumption of power being provided predominantly by large, centralized generation sources and consumed as soon as it is produced. As a means of addressing...
Utilities & alternative energy
April 2017

America First: carbon emissions go last?

Potential impact of President Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” on the power sector

The Trump administration’s approach to the traditional energy trilemma (the challenge of balancing the goals of cheap, secure and clean energy) appears set to skew heavily towards the low cost and secure aspects of energy supply at the expense of any focus on carbon emissions. While federal...
Oil & gas, Utilities & alternative energy
March 2017

Unconventional hydrocarbons in Latin America

From dreams to reality

Production of unconventional hydrocarbons became globally prominent in 2010, when the US, for the first time, reached a daily output of 1 million barrels of tight oil. In Latin America, where high unconventional hydrocarbon potential has been widely recognized, Governments noticed the...
Oil & gas, Utilities & alternative energy
February 2017

Italian gas distribution tenders

An opportunity for utilities companies and infrastructure funds

The Italian gas distribution sector The Italian gas distribution sector is highly fragmented: the top six DSOs represent ~70% of the existing 22 million delivery points (DPs), while the remaining 30% is split among more than 200 players.In order to increase companies’ efficiency...
Utilities & alternative energy
February 2017

A radical change in the consumption of energy in cities

Substantial savings can be achieved in a decade

Energy efficiency has been a hot topic for several years. It is one of the most important levers when improving the productivity of developed societies, as well as their environmental impact - a unit less of energy consumed for the same productive activity reduces not only costs, but also the...
Utilities & alternative energy
January 2017

Battery Storage: Still Too Early?

A report by Arthur D. Little

Renewable energy deployment over the last decades has posed unprecedented challenges for the planning and operation of power systems. In the context of increasingly decentralized and intermittent generation, power utilities1 and system operators need to rethink their portfolios, business...
Utilities & alternative energy