Strategy & Risk

We help utilities, investors, and governments to take well-informed strategic and financial decisions and execute in a rapidly evolving and increasingly volatile energy environment.

As the utility sector grows more complex, we help our clients tackle the opportunities and challenges presented by the transition to a decarbonized society, the growth of renewables, pressure from new entrants, and ongoing market liberalization and reform.

What we do

Developing corporate strategy. We identify growth opportunities in a fast-changing sector and enhance processes for decision making and review.

Understanding market outlooks. We assess how power markets, technologies, and value pools are evolving and develop insights to inform portfolio planning, asset valuation, and investment.

Building an agile utility. We help clients make decisions in days rather than months, doubling value-added work time, spreading innovation throughout the organization, and increasing frontline productivity by as much as 25 percent.

Assessing regulatory scenarios based on value at stake. We help clients define national energy strategies, understand market reforms, and make their businesses more resilient to regulatory change.

Improving trading and energy management. We work to optimize commercial activities and organizational structures, using advanced analytic techniques to optimize risk and return profiles, and build capabilities to benefit customers and the business.

Examples of our work

Our recent projects have included helping clients to:

Evaluating power-plant assets before privatization

Supporting a government with a fact-based evaluation of power-plant assets using a customized market model, resulting in a well-informed and successful privatization process.

Identifying strategic targets

Working with a European utility to develop a strategic target portfolio and management unit, resulting in the identification of asset investments worth between €2 billion and €3 billion.

Optimizing a gas portfolio

Helping a midstream company to identify attractive asset and contract positions and define a road map to roll out its commercial organization, creating €200 million in gross margin in the first year.

Integrating trading activities

Supporting a utility in integrating its trading activities in an asset-backed trading house and building supporting systems, processes, and capabilities to deliver cost savings and revenue enhancements worth €800 million.

Rethinking portfolio management

Helping to restructure the portfolio of merchant-generation assets at a US utility and providing a detailed evaluation of local markets and asset-retirement options under multiple scenarios.

Modeling global electricity markets

Developing a 2040 perspective on ten global power markets by building models, developing market-evolution scenarios, analyzing drivers and sensitivities, and identifying key business implications, opportunities, and risks for each market.

Power utilities: the next 10 years

Featured capabilities

To bring clients field-tested solutions and the best thinking available, we invest in creating:

State-of-the-art power-market models. A means to produce granular assessments of supply and demand trends and evolving market structures in regions from Europe to North America and in countries from Australia to Japan. Our Energy Insights provide a complementary suite of models.
A regulatory and external-affairs diagnostic. Provides web-based benchmarking across industries to help clients assess and monitor their capabilities for managing external affairs and engaging with stakeholders on regulatory issues.
An advanced-analytics energy-trading tool. Enables clients to compare their historic portfolio management against optimal dispatch, identify value losses, and develop tools to support forward-looking portfolio management decisions.
A commercial performance survey. Allows users to benchmark energy-trading performance in front-office and back-office support functions.
Proprietary TETRIS (total earning trajectory for new regulatory and investment scenarios) tool. Helps investor-owned North American utilities maximize value for themselves and their ratepayers by identifying capital opportunities and assessing the impact of regulatory models.
E-mobility ecosystem of the future tool. Defines the layers and elements of a new industry ecosystem, identifying core industry battlegrounds and possible competitive dynamics.
Multiclient venture-capital effort. Supports venture capital funds investing in European energy-related start-ups.
A grid of the future analysis. Enables users to assess technology disruptions, understand likely regulatory evolution, consider growth opportunities through M&A and in adjacencies, plan the next wave of lean operations, and evaluate platform-based business models.

Featured experts

Related insights

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Playing offense: Industrials staying ahead in the energy transition

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By upgrading their energy strategies, industrials can reduce energy costs, accommodate market volatility, and achieve ambitious decarbonization targets—here’s how.