It’s going to be a long trip.
Electric industry analyst Hugh Wynne of research shop SSR says that investors have to operate under the assumption that world governments will only move more aggressively to turn the screws on the biggest polluters.
Saudi Electric is unique in that it generates more than half of its power by burning oil — the effect of which the Kingdom hopes to rapidly balance by investing in solar fields.
Meanwhile, some of the more progressively minded utility companies are keen to take advantage of new tools evolving out of advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
It’s a “most transformative” tool, says Emeka Igwilo, chief data officer at Nicor, a division of Southern Company Gas, itself a division of Atlanta-based Southern Company , who explains that the riskiest part of any utility company’s business is when people start digging on their properties without first calling their utility company.
“Now I don’t have people driving around looking for problems, I can direct them to where they need to go.” Southern rolled out Urbint to its Nicor division in 2019 and to the entire company last year.
The tool predicts, but somebody has to intervene.” We still need muscle, for now.