According to a survey of more than 100 senior executives in the US and Canadian ...

According to a survey of more than 100 senior executives in the US and Canadian electric and natural gas industries, the five most critical challenges facing the North American energy industry, in order of importance, are environmental regulation, aging infrastructure, non-environmental regulation, an aging industry workforce and the need for new pricing mechanisms. The annual survey, now in its fifth year, was conducted by Capgemini, jointly with Platts. Maintaining high levels of reliable power delivery was cited as a key industry focus by more than half (55% giving it a rating of 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 from ‘not important at all’ to ‘very important’) of the respondents to the survey, which was completed April 2011. Executives indicated challenges to achieving this goal related to key infrastructure, specifically transmission. Additionally, 51% identified cyber security technology as highly important, especially in terms of customer data and control systems, while 44% cited the importance of infrastructure security, including pipelines, plants, and transmission. ‘While executives identified environmental regulations as the most important issue facing the power industry, and they expect wind, solar, and natural gas to increase in their fuel mix, they continued to give the nod to nuclear and unconventional gas,’ said Tia Hensler Heath, Director of Market Research and Operations at Platts. Nearly half of the survey respondents (40%) agreed increasing shale gas is very important; 37% gave high importance to expanding coal in more environmentally acceptable ways; and 31% emphasised the need for expanding the nuclear fleet. This said, fuel mix issues were in the bottom third of the power industry’s 13 issues tested. When asked about pricing and rates, which ranked as the fifth leading concern, close to one-third of the survey respondents rated decoupling and critical peak pricing as very important. The study also shows that there is some debate as to whose responsibility it is to educate consumers on green energy costs. While 42% of executives believe it is very important to educate consumers, only 27% strongly agree that it is the responsibility of the utility companies to educate the end user.