Who is impacted by energy? We all are. Regardless of our roles, whether we work in the industry or not, we all use energy in some form or another. And we use it everyday. So, when it comes to energy transition, industry leaders must consider the end user. In episode 142 of thinkenergy, Greg Guthridge and Nicholas Handcock of EY Global share how stakeholders and utilities can better understand the consumer energy experience—and, ultimately, how to develop more informed strategies to the energy transition.

Related links

 

• EY Global: https://www.ey.com/en_gl 

• EY Global ecoEnergy Profile quiz: https://www.ey.com/en_gl/ecoenergy-profile 

• EY Global on X: https://twitter.com/EYnews 

• EY Global on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ernstyoung 

• Greg Guthridge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregguthridge/ 

• Nicholas Handcock on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholashandcock/ 

• Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ 

• Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en  

 

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Transcript:

Music. Hi. Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and even up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you've got thoughts feedback or ideas for topics that we should cover, we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com, Hi everyone. Welcome back. Something I try to do on this show is to make sure that we're looking at the energy transition from a number of different perspectives. So, we obviously touch on the technologies that will be part of that transition, whether that's heat pumps or EVs or some of the grid technology that utilities like hydro Ottawa are beginning to roll out to modernize our grid. We also look at the overall governance and policy structure that guides our you know, societal energy decisions, how we choose to go about using energy, making energy, etc., in our society, the role of the various stakeholders on the grid gets touched on understanding kind of who the players are. There's a bit of an education piece here of knowing who all the complex players are in this, in this kind of system. And one thing that we've touched on before that I think is really important to keep bringing to the forefront is the end users of energy. And frankly, that's all of us, no matter what other roles in the transition we might play. We're all end users. We all need to heat our homes and workplaces. We all need to move around in some manner. We need lights, we need to cook, we need to charge our devices. And we don't really want to have to worry about those things. We want that to be smooth and easy and how we as end users of energy are experiencing and interacting with and in some cases, taking a leadership role in the energy transition. That's really important, because we need all those things, and we want all those things to be smooth. It's important for our utility companies to understand and to take that into account when we're planning our and I'm speaking as a member of utility. Now, when we're planning our strategies and programs and products, we need to take into account, how does this impact our end users of energy? How are they going to experience this? So, my talk today is with Greg Guthridge and Nicholas Hancock of EY global. Greg is EY Global's powering utilities customer experience transformation leader and Nicholas leads EY research program that's called navigating the energy transition. Both of them ultimately help various stakeholders, including utilities, better understand consumer values, their preferences and their aspirations for their energy experience, which ideally will lead to more informed strategies and approaches to the energy transition for those decision makers, whether that's at the policy or the regulatory or the kind of utility implementation level. So, I'm really excited to talk to Greg and Nicholas today and hear their insight into the work that they've been doing. Greg and Nicholas, welcome to the show. Thanks, Trevor, great to be here. Thanks for the invitation to share our perspectives today. Sure. So, I always like to start getting to know a little bit from our guests of how they got into the energy space. And Greg not to kind of put you on the spot or embarrass you, but you've been named as one of consulting magazine's 25 consultants for excellence in energy, which is a rather lofty sounding title. I understand. You have several patents in the US for energy efficiency and demand management analytics. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you came to be in the energy space.

Greg Guthridge  04:00

Yeah. Trevor, it was really interesting my journey. You know, it's, you can think of it a little bit as an accidental process here. I didn't leave college thinking that I would be a consumer person in the energy space. In fact, I also, I thought for a long time that utilities were kind of a boring and dusty part of the energy ecosystem. I wanted to be in marketing or in manufacturing, or someplace, you know, considerably more sexy. But what's interesting is, you know, what an amazing journey into what I believe is kind of the center of the universe. Now, you know, energy is everything for us, and I can't think of a more interesting and dynamic place to be at the moment as we think about how we're going to transition to a cleaner, safer, more secure energy system in the future. So, it's been, it's been fascinating to kind of make my way down this path, but I'm super happy to be right at the center of what I think is one of the most, most critical elements of our society and our economy moving forward.

Trevor Freeman  04:00

Absolutely and my goodness, if, if I ever meet that person who you know 20, 30, years into their career, is doing what they thought they would do at the end of college or university, I feel like I'd strike a gold mine. But now let's pivot over to EY global, and the work that EY does in the energy sector, specifically the role when it comes to the energy transition, tell us a little bit about what EY is doing in that space.

Greg Guthridge  05:39

Oh, Trevor, it's fascinating. EY has really taken a very progressive approach to helping our clients, a broad swath of clients, from industry to manufacturing to energy to utilities, you name it, across the spectrum. Really imagine you know how their capabilities; their value propositions and their customer experience need to evolve. Of course, I I represent the customer element of the EY practice in utilities and in resources, but we have experts that that can help with everything from infrastructure to generation to renewables, to audit and tax and financial services, and you name it. In the customer space, we're really laser focused on helping our clients think about and imagining. You know that if you think about it, the typical utility to date is, is the is the product of over 100 years’ worth of development. Most utilities were formed in the Edison era, many, many years ago, and they have a big challenge on their hands. They've got to find a way to kind of evolve not only their business and operating models, but also their regulatory and their customer experiences to really form fit