utilities alternative energy

Utilities & alternative energy

Our core services cover utilities & alternative-energy fields.  We have the in-depth, practical experience to exploit a broad range of industry and functional skills to help you identify and refine your vision, enhance your performance and realize the benefits of your innovations. 

We work together with our oil & gas clients as partners to bring clear thinking to bear on key strategic issues. What sets us apart is our unique ability to combine four factors: a deep, practical understanding of the energy industry and its most difficult challenges, the highest caliber of people, innovation to produce fresh insight, and a commitment to achieving measurable results.

It's what we're known for and enables us to create solutions that effectively satisfy the needs of our clients, all the way from boardroom to operations.

Our services for utilities & alternative-energy clients are structured around 6 competence centers:

Power generation

We offer a broad array of services in the power-generation field to our clients (government and privately owned utilities, independent power producers, nuclear upstream suppliers, governmental nuclear agencies), with a particular focus on the nuclear-energy segment, leveraging our deep functional and industrial expertise.

Over the last several years, we have helped clients in more than 100 nuclear-related projects, bolstering our deep understanding of the nuclear value chain. We regularly help numerous nuclear upstream suppliers to realign their nuclear strategies and optimize organization-wide performance.

Our power-generation consulting solutions within the nuclear industry cover the entire nuclear life cycle, from new build to waste management and decommissioning:

  • Nuclear decommissioning strategy and program ramp-up
  • OPEX and CAPEX performance/excellence
  • Recovery and management of large CAPEX projects

We provide a robust, structured consulting approach to the nuclear industry (“Arthur D. Little Nuclear Industry Framework”), integrating our deep learning from our litany of past assignments with our insight concerning the emerging developments of today.

 

Transmission

Through our experience in the sector, we have a solid understanding of the key challenges faced by transmission-system operators (TSOs) and how different companies respond:

  • Smartization: technology evolution that is revolutionizing the fundamental utilities business model
  • Energy Storage: triggering operational and financial benefits, but with subtle boundary conditions requiring nuanced analysis
  • Regulatory Management: evolving regulatory models that create fragmentation throughout global markets
  • Investments & Asset Management: coping with rising volumes and complexity, while maintaining a “lean” philosophy on the existing asset base
  • Financing: new sources of financing required to deal with growing asset bases
  • Diversification: exploring new revenue streams to avoid being trapped purely in regulated activities
  • Public Involvement: addressing the rising importance of the general public as a key stakeholder for TSOs

Digitalization & innovation

Electricity markets are undergoing a gradual revolution whereby utilities must either evolve into new, digital organizations, or face the threat of becoming obsolete due to competition and displacement from distributed renewable energy, micro-grids and other technologies. 

Our digitalization & innovation competence center seeks to help clients traverse this historical revolution in the utilities business model, with expertise around 4 main topics:

  • Digital Business Strategy Management: The Digital Era Vision
  • Defining digitalization as the concept of replacement of human work by digitalization, with the expectation of significant AI advancement in the near future    
  • Estimating the impact of digitalization on the utilities business based on the likely substitution of human work by automated, digital machines
  • Generation and Wholesale in the  Digital Era: Commodity-Supply Flexibility
  • Digital O&M in conventional power plants, virtual power plants, deviation management for committed day-ahead sales for renewable-energy players
  • Digital Retail Management: Client-Experience Excellence
  • Digital communication-channel optimization, demand-side management
  • Digital Network Operations: Network Service Quality
  • Intelligent consumption prediction systems, advanced network-planning systems, control-center operations, automation of network components and self-healing capabilities

Renewable energy & energy efficiency

Arthur D. Little’s global renewable-energy & energy-efficiency competence center performs critical strategy and implementation work for major clients worldwide, reflecting our renowned expertise in this field.

Globally, we have carried out over 100 projects over the past 5 years, which have helped our clients to implement renewable-energy and energy-efficiency solutions.

Arthur D. Little is uniquely positioned to assist in developing your renewable-energy and energy-efficiency strategy.  We have the tools, experience, processes & approach to help you achieve your goals: 

  • Renewable-Energy Investment-Opportunity Identification
  • Country-Level Renewable-Energy Regulatory-Policy Definition
  • Market- & Technology-Trend Analysis
  • Market-Entry & Partnership-Strategy Development
  • R&D Resource-Strategy Development
  • Feasibility Studies & Due Diligences for Specific Opportunities

We have a vast array of experience across large players as well as start-ups and emerging companies, which furnishes us with deep practical insight into the challenges and requirements of our renewable-energy clients’ businesses. 

Commercial excellence

We help our clients realize commercial excellence by enhancing their products and services, optimizing costs, conducting organizational restructuring, enhancing customer care and optimizing debt structuring.

  • Anticipate
    • We support different stages of our clients’ critical commercial issues:Anticipate
    • Assessment of market trends and implications
    • Quick diagnoses of existing situation (4-week assessments with experts)
    • Benchmarking with leading power & gas retailers
  • Innovate
    • Definitions of new management models, customer management, sales management, back office
    • Launching of new offerings and channels
    • Structuring of plans for building intelligence and capabilities
    • Review and set-up of new customer-experience & -satisfaction metrics
  • Transform
    • Implementation of new management tools and new organizational models
    • Support for new IT-tools implementation
    • Review of key processes and achievement of cost and quality targets
    • Support for large-scale transformation programs
       

Water & waste management

We have performed more than 50 critical water & waste management projects over the past 10 years for prominent global clients.

Our specific focus and expertise are on disposal, integrated waste management, corporate finance and CAPEX management, working for utilities, manufacturers, private-equity funds and public-sector clients.

We work across the water & waste management value chains, offering a vast array of services:

  • Operational excellence
  • CAPEX management
  • ICT & innovation: Growth acceleration and digital transformation
  • HR & organization: Procurement excellence
  • Strategy, planning & controlling: Financial advisory (M&A)

We keep up to date with the latest market and technology trends in water & waste management to maintain relevance for our clients.