Offering Critical Solutions to the GCC Utility Industry at the 2022 World Utilities Congress
The World Utilities Congress, hosted by TAQA from 9-11 May at the National Exhibition Centre in Abu Dhabi, brought together government ministers, policy makers, and industry leaders to share insights and strategies for driving growth and innovation across the value chain.
The power and water utilities industry, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, will witness unprecedented multi-billion-dollar investment opportunities over the next decade. The focus of this congress was to ensure utility leaders are better prepared to equip their businesses and encourage integrated transformation within the sector.
The conference highlighted the issues CEOs and their leadership teams need to consider as they modernise their businesses to manage disruptive change and embed future-focused digital transformation strategies in response to evolving market and customer needs. Copperleaf is a pioneer in this field. We help organisations streamline their capital planning processes to enhance risk mitigation, make higher-value decisions, and ensure that these decisions are aligned with the company’s strategic goals.
Copperleaf CMO Boudewijn Neijens speaks on “The future electricity and water market landscape—building the utility of tomorrow”
On the first day of the conference, Julian Lambert, Senior Sales Director for Copperleaf in the Middle East, presented on optimising capital plans to maximise value while considering financial and non-financial drivers. Julian highlighted some of the portfolio planning challenges utilities face as the sector seeks to balance improving resilience with planning for an uncertain future. He explained that utilities need to be able to evaluate all potential investments on a common economic scale that accounts for financial and resourcing goals as well as environmental and social impacts. He shared how National Grid, a Copperleaf client in both Europe and the United States, enhanced its decision making to deliver higher-value plans and improve planning efficiency. Read more about our work with National Grid here.
On day two, our Chief Marketing Officer, Boudewijn Neijens, participated in a session during the strategic conference on “Green finance as a catalyst for the energy transition”. In this panel, industry leaders discussed the key indicators investors use to select projects and the strategies power and water companies are employing to attract sustainable capital. Boudewijn also participated as a panelist during the technical conference on the topic of “The future electricity and water market landscape—building the utility of tomorrow”. This session explored the challenges facing the sector and how these demands will shape the future of the water and electricity industry as organisations aim to become more efficient and resilient.
Following the successful participation at the World Utilities Congress, Copperleaf published a white paper specifically addressing the challenges utilities in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region face, and the steps organisations can take to strike the right balance between cost-effectively managing business-as-usual (BAU) activities and investing for the future.
Download our Delivering Value in the GCC Utility Sector white paper to learn more.