Utilities prioritising new tech adoption in next five years survey shows
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Utilities executives anticipate the adoption of new technology to have the most positive impact on their organisation in the next five years, EY has found.
The findings are published in EY’s Future of Energy survey, which also shows that changes in energy consumption are becoming increasingly critical to an accelerating demand load in the years ahead.
Similarly advances in renewable energy sources, the second highest ranked trend, also is down from the previous 2021 survey, while others cited are workforce evolution and advances in distributed energy resources.
EY notes that the power and utilities industry is balancing a multitude of priorities. Electricity demand projections are growing significantly, electric and gas infrastructure needs to be modernised, regulatory demands and directives continue to grow, and customer and stakeholder expectations are evolving rapidly in a world focused on sustainability, reliability and resilience.
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The survey of over 1,000 energy industry participants indicated that the majority plan to invest in digital technology and view their ability to adopt these technologies as a competitive advantage.
Almost all indicate that their workforce is agile enough to respond to changing business needs and that their ability to reskill as an organisation would determine their overall success over the next five years.
However, many also believe their culture impedes the adoption of digital technologies and currently only a quarter are retraining existing employees.
The majority do however also say that they plan to rely more on vendors and contractors than they have in the past.
“The EY Future of Energy Survey captures industry sentiment at a very unique moment in time – around the US presidential election and looking toward 2025,” said Timothy Haskell, EY Americas People Consulting leader for Power & Utilities and Oil & Gas and Chemicals.
“Energy executives and employees expressed a refreshed focus on the strong operational performance of the industry. They also realised the challenges to stay competitive as new policies take shape in a rapidly changing technology and workforce environment.”
Top technologies
Top technologies currently deployed include advanced analytics, AI, cloud computing, cybersecurity monitoring and IoT.
However, very few believe that some of these, such as AI, chatbots and cloud computing, have realised a return on their investment expectations thus far.
Looking ahead, virtual and/or augmented reality is among those expected to show growth with new use cases in the next five years.
However, almost half view securing funding for technology adoption as a major challenge, especially as regulators or other stakeholders may lack familiarity with the technologies and question their strategic value.
To effectively navigate this landscape, a clear vision and prioritisation of technology investments are crucial, EY suggests, adding the other crucial barriers – competing priorities, available workforce, lack of vision clarity and leadership support – to technology adoption and by extension industry transformation.
Industry executives will need to adjust their posture to enable and sustain the value from these investments and transform their companies, EY concludes.
