"Think for a moment about why a big utility like TVA (serving 9 million customers in seven states, with more than $11 billion in revenue) sets out to plan 20 years ahead. It is investing in extremely large and capital-intensive infrastructure like power plants and transmission lines, which cost billions of dollars and last for decades. These are not decisions to make lightly; the utility wants to be sure that they will still be needed, and will still pay off, for many years to come."
Utilities and the financial firms that invest in them need some certainty regarding long-term demand in order to justify huge loans. For 100 years, the trend was increasing demand. Bucking a 100-year-trend requires re-thinking some fundamental assumptions. Also, financial firms probably gave out loans 10 or 20 years ago / utilities accepted loans that reasonably assumed increasing demand.
"Think for a moment about why a big utility like TVA (serving 9 million customers in seven states, with more than $11 billion in revenue) sets out to plan 20 years ahead. It is investing in extremely large and capital-intensive infrastructure like power plants and transmission lines, which cost billions of dollars and last for decades. These are not decisions to make lightly; the utility wants to be sure that they will still be needed, and will still pay off, for many years to come."
Utilities and the financial firms that invest in them need some certainty regarding long-term demand in order to justify huge loans. For 100 years, the trend was increasing demand. Bucking a 100-year-trend requires re-thinking some fundamental assumptions. Also, financial firms probably gave out loans 10 or 20 years ago / utilities accepted loans that reasonably assumed increasing demand.