September 18, 2013

Visualizing the Future: Public Utilities in 2020.

Symposium 2013 examines the numerous issues, needs, and innovations that regulated utilities will need to respond to in the near future. This Symposium is an attempt to preview the world of the next decade that future utility regulators, executives, and consumer advocate will face.

Consistent with its historical design, the Symposium will be organized into three major panels:

• The first panel will serve as the Symposium’s crystal ball and describe the challenges and opportunities that will exist in 2020 for the water, gas, and electric industries.

• The second panel will discuss the legislative and regulatory issues that the industry must address over the next decade. An important part of this discussion will be the design of possible regulatory solutions and the role of the federal government in that process.

• The third panel will focus on the set of non-regulatory issues/solutions that will involve public utilities in 2020. The range of topics for this panel is potentially vast, but will include some discussion of capital availability, technology, infrastructure, and changing demographic and market forces.