Consolidation, continuous improvement, optimisation, operational excellence – haven’t we these words or phrases spoken before? It’s just that we hear these spoken more often when it isn’t business as usual. It isn’t that companies are oblivious to their significance or implementation; it is just that they zoom up in the ‘to do’ list when companies are compelled to chase growth from within, as the economic situation demands today.
For water utilities, operating expenditure could account for up to half, if not more, of their annual expenditure. Our cover story examines the issue of energy efficiency, which is among the top two operating costs for most water and wastewater utilities, the other being manpower. By grabbing the energy saving opportunities in the energy-intensive elements of the water cycle, utilities can not only cut their operating costs but also reduce their carbon emissions. The authors point out that water conservation will reduce all components of the water and energy cycle. But water utilities should target energy efficiency gains in areas where they have a greater level of influence such as pre-treatment and optimisation of treatment processes. The resources freed up by reducing operation costs could also be used to finance expenditure on areas critical to future growth.
Utilities would also do well to address to the efficiency of their business processes and practices to ensure availability, reliability, and efficiency of services at all levels. Thus, Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) is implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to measure, integrate and automate all of DEWA’s operations in order to deliver top-quality services to customers, employees and partners.
From an industry standpoint, progressive companies from the region are diversifying into other geographical markets outside their ‘Arabic speaking’ comfort zone. I spoke to Rami Ghandour, Executive Director of Metito Utilities about his plans for emerging markets, especially China. Ghandour believes that geographical diversification has helped Metito maintain overall growth even for a company of its size.
According to a Bank Sarasin study, a shakeout of the global solar industry is inevitable as the imbalance between production capacities and demand has become too great with around 50 GW of production capacity for solar modules compared with sales of 21 GW forecast to the end of 2011. Our Energy World section examines the consolidation trend underway in the European photovoltaic (PV) industry as spending cuts by governments slow down demand. On the flip side, falling prices could also provide an opportunity for countries to set up competitively priced solar PV projects. It is, therefore, interesting to note that the first project in the newly launched 1,000 MW Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park is a PV plant of 10 MW capacity.
As for the combined H20-MW issue you are holding in your hands now – it’s simply us walking the talk. You can continue to drill down to industry specifics at www.h2ome.net and www.megawhatme.com. I hope you like the new package that we have put together. To direct your comments, queries, roses, brickbats, please refer to the adjacent imprint box.
(Editor’s Page, January 2012, Megawhat-H20)
