By WTC Kansas City Benefactor: Black & Veatch Corporation

This year’s Strategic Directions in the U.S. Electric Industry Report shows an intensifying level of concern for a wide range of issues. In our annual Top Ten Industry Issues rankings, once again reliability was the top concern for utility participants. However, a look at just the previous five years demonstrates that utility participants are ranking virtually all issues with higher levels of concern. In some cases, chronic issues are becoming more severe. In others, changes in the business context, including a lingering recession, regulatory policy uncertainty and dramatic changes in commodity fuels markets, are exacerbating the effects of age-old concerns.

This year’s report examines the challenges and underlying uncertainties affecting the entire electric utility value chain.