EEI Chairman and Chairman, President and CEO of PNM Resources Jeff Sterba on the future

摘要

It's easier to predict the future 30 or 40 years out. When 2050 rolls around, who's going to care whether Energy Information Administration projections were right or not? It will all be water under the bridge. What we asked Jeff Sterba to do is harder: Tell us what the electric industry will be like in five and 10 years, He's the perfect person for this mantic task. Chairman of the Edison Electric Institute for the past year, he appreciates the difficulty of balancing investor demands with consumer interests. As CEO of Albuquerque-based PNM Resources, parent company of utility subsidiaries PNM and Texas-New Mexico Power, he knows first hand what it's like in the trenches, so to speak, with the public utility regulators. Grounded firmly by his economics education, he's also a big believer in innovation and technology, involved for years with the Electric Power Reseach Institute. If Faith Popcorn misses a trend, it's a blip on the marketing radar screen. If the Maya prediction for the end of the world in 2012 is wrong, we'd be happy. But if electric utilities don't plan well for the future, life could be pretty darned dismal. Jeff Sterba's an optimist-he thinks the industry is up to the challenge. Read on.