Around the world, citizens, scientists, and governments are demanding increased action to protect our planet. But the groundswell of environmental awareness isn’t enough. To be successful, sustainability initiatives must produce real results.
Moving from fossil fuels to clean electricity is an important place to start. Heating and cooling homes and businesses, fueling transportation, and powering manufacturing are just a few of the many opportunities that exist for clean electrification. Yet, there is no common definition of “clean electrification,” and no agreed-upon standards for achieving it.
For utilities trying to understand how well their organization is doing, that makes it difficult to set goals and track progress. To move the needle on clean energy, executives must focus on resilience, reliability, and safety while also understanding a multitude of new technologies. And they must do so while continuing to deliver services that are responsive to stakeholders at the lowest possible rates.
To help leaders evaluate their utility’s progress on the path to clean electrification, IBM, in partnership with a global team of energy and sustainability experts, has worked with the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC), the world leader in open standards benchmarking, to create the Clean Electrification Maturity Model (CEMM). This open-standards model for clean electrification includes 200 organizational attributes across 8 domain competencies: market innovation, strategy and leadership, organization and culture, technology, sustainability, grid operations, work and asset management, and customer experience.
The CEMM helps electric utilities assess their organizational maturity relative to new and emerging competencies by encouraging them to ask the following key questions:
- How advanced is your utility’s approach to securing assets or balancing distributed energy resources?
- How deep are your utility’s skills in creating a digital base layer to improve industry transformation, or in terms of automating services?
- How far along is your utility in creating new go-to-market approaches?
In years past, legislation was the primary driver of electrification. Now, it’s technology, suggests new research from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV). According to IBV data, more than half of utility and industry executives (56%) say technology that makes it easier to harness green alternatives is driving change, compared to 54% who attribute change to regulatory powers. In the energy sector, technology is a growing force for positive change.
Another related driver of electrification is innovation, as utilities everywhere are experiencing challenges to their business models. In response to those challenges, technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics are enabling new ecosystems through which to better coordinate distributed energy resources, simulate grid control, manage risk, and improve contingency planning. Outcomes include new offerings for smart cities, expansion of clean e-mobility alternatives, and vastly increased choices for customers.
Because we believe the move toward clean electrification is critical, IBM has made the CEMM available to any network utility that wants to perform self-assessments and leverage the results for its own strategic planning. Many utility executives will recall the Smart Grid Maturity Model that IBM experts developed in 2008 with partners Carnegie Mellon University and APQC. The CEMM isn’t just a refresh of prior maturity models. Rather, it’s a reinvention that addresses the challenges and opportunities that new technologies and capabilities create.
Change is needed, and IBM wants to help utilities make the smartest decisions possible while defining their own paths forward. The CEMM is just the beginning. Learn more about receiving a custom Clean Electrification Maturity Model assessment for your utility, or contact APQC at CEMM@apqc.org to get started.
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