Electric Perspectives

Women in Leadership

March is Women’s History Month, and EEI honors and recognizes the achievements and contributions of women throughout the electric power industry. As our member companies make progress on their diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments, it’s important to create career pathways for employees that can lead to leadership opportunities.

In this episode, EEI Executive Vice President of Clean Energy and General Counsel Emily Fisher speaks with Puget Sound Energy President and CEO Mary Kipp about how female representation has changed in the workplace, how companies are empowering their female employees, Mary's advice to women who want to advance in their careers, and more. 

 

Editor's Note: This podcast episode was recorded and originally published in March 2022.

 

Electric Power Industry Outlook for 2023

In late February, executives from the Edison Electric Institute briefed Wall Street analysts, bankers, investors, and other industry stakeholders on the state of the U.S. electric power industry at the NASDAQ MarketSite in New York City. Today's episode will feature a recap of the briefing.

EEI’s leadership team covered several high-priority topics, including ESG; the role of new and developing carbon-free technologies; electric transportation; energy grid reliability, resilience, and security; federal and state regulations; workforce development and diversity, equity, and inclusion; financial performance; and ongoing efforts to meet customer expectations and to support customers in need. 

You can watch the full presentation and read the prepared remarks on EEI’s website.

Planning and Preparing for Hurricane Season Year-Round

America’s electric companies prepare year-round for extreme weather events, and they make investments and upgrades to help prevent power outages and to speed up restoration when they do occur. In the Sunshine State, Florida Power and Light (FPL) has made significant investments to help withstand hurricane-force winds across its service territory. On this episode, FPL Executive Director of Emergency Preparedness Tom Gwaltney discusses how the company prepares for hurricanes, the proactive investments and upgrades the company has made to enhance reliability for customers, the FPLAir One fixed-wing drone that helps assess damage after storms, and more.

Editor's note: This conversation was recorded in December 2022.

Reinvesting in Clean Energy Infrastructure

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) marks one of the greatest investments in clean energy in U.S. history. As part of the $369 billion investment to promote domestic energy production and manufacturing, the IRA established the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) Program under the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office and appropriated $5 billion to help fund certain clean energy and carbon reduction projects through fiscal year 2026.

On this episode, Jigar Shah, director of DOE’s Loan Programs Office, which oversees the EIR, and Emily Fisher, EEI Executive Vice President of Clean Energy and General Counsel, discuss this program and explain how it can help our industry accelerate its transition to cleaner energy sources while helping to minimize the cost impacts on customers. For more information, visit the DOE's EIR webpage. Interested applicants can request a pre-application consultation by emailing lpo@hq.doe.gov.

055 Electric Perspectives: EPRI Drives Collaboration to Enhance Energy Grid Resilience

Storms and natural disasters are increasing in frequency and severity, and EEI’s member companies are working to harden the energy grid against these threats to ensure customers can receive the reliable and resilient energy they need to power their lives. To bring the electric power sector together and strengthen the industry’s approach to managing climate risk to the energy grid, EPRI created the Climate Resilience and Adaptation (READi) initiative. On this episode, Morgan Scott, EPRI’s director of Climate READi and Sustainability & Ecosystem Stewardship, discusses the initiative and how the initiative's members — including EEI member companies — are working together to help build an informed and consistent approach to adaptation and resilience planning.

Visit the Climate READi website for more information. 

054 Electric Perspectives: EEI 2022 Highlights: Energy Resilience, Geopolitics, Supply Chains, Hydrogen, and More!

This episode is the third and final part of our series featuring the highlights of EEI 2022, our annual thought leadership forum. Tune in to hear leading experts discuss energy resilience, geopolitics and the impacts to supply chains, hydrogen rising as a clean fuel, and innovative workforce development programs. Guests include Rod West, Entergy group president of utility operations; Laszlo von Lazar, Black & Veatch president of energy and process industries; Matt O' Keefe, head of O Power, Oracle Energy and Water; GE Power Chief Marketing Officer Brian Gutknecht; and Dr. Belenthia Berry, St. Petersburg College's dean of workforce development and corporate partnerships.

For more highlights of EEI 2022, visit EEI's website. Be sure to mark your calendar for EEI 2023, which will be hosted in Austin, Texas, from June 11-13.

 

053 Electric Perspectives: Enhancing Industry Coordination and Building Resilience After Superstorm Sandy

Ten years ago, Superstorm Sandy brought severe winds and devastating flooding to New Jersey and New York. At one point, it engulfed 800 miles between the East Coast and the Great Lakes region, impacting customers in several additional states. The storm caused one of the most massive power outages in U.S. history, with about 8.5 million customers losing power at some point in parts of the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and the Ohio Valley. The electric power industry always has focused on strengthening its industry-government partnerships and on improving emergency response plans and processes, but Superstorm Sandy was a catalyst for rethinking how the industry organizes itself to manage major incidents. Those efforts resulted in significant enhancements over the past decade. 

 

On this episode, we are joined by American Electric Power Chair and CEO Nick Akins and EEI Senior Vice President of Security and Preparedness Scott Aaronson to discuss the lessons that the electric power industry learned from Superstorm Sandy, how the industry has worked with federal partners to improve emergency coordination, and how Superstorm Sandy forever changed the way electric companies plan for natural disasters. 

052 Electric Perspectives: Partnering to Stop Scams

November 13-19 is International Fraud Awareness Week, and November 16 is Utility Scams Awareness Day. EEI’s member electric companies will join other utilities to raise customer awareness of imposter utility scams and ways to stop them with the help of Utilities United Against Scams (UUAS), a consortium of more than 150 U.S. and Canadian electric, water, and natural gas utilities (and their respective trade associations).

On this episode, we are joined by UUAS Executive Director Monica Martinez and UUAS Chair Bud Ajdukovic, who also serves as the Kissimmee Utility Authority Customer Service Manager, to discuss the trends in utility scams, what customers should do if they suspect they are being scammed, and more.

051 Global Circuit: Co-creating Energy Solutions with Local Communities

As electric companies focus on increasing reliable electricity access within their communities, they are working alongside Indigenous community stakeholders to provide communities services they need. What are the ways in which electric companies can co-create energy solutions with their local communities? What should leadership look like to support employees and customers? And why is it critical to make the energy decision-making process more inclusive? Jay Grewal, President and CEO of Manitoba Hydro, joins this episode of Global Circuit.

 

The Global Circuit is brought to you by EEI International Programs as part of EEI’s Electric Perspectives podcast. For more information about EEI International Programs, visit https://www.eei.org/about-eei/international-members

050 Electric Perspectives: Leading the Clean Energy Transformation

There has been tremendous progress on the climate policy front over the past year in the United States, including the bipartisan infrastructure law, the robust clean energy tax package included in the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. Taken together, these new laws firmly place the United States at the forefront of global efforts to deploy new carbon-free technologies and to drive down carbon emissions. On this episode, we are joined by Eric Holdsworth, EEI managing director of Clean Energy and Environmental Policy, who traveled with EEI leaders to several major clean energy events during National Clean Energy Week and Climate Week NYC. We discuss what happened at those events, how the recent legislative wins benefit our customers, and how EEI and our member companies will be demonstrating our clean energy leadership on the global stage at COP-27 next month in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.