Utilities & Alternative Energy

Bain has worked on hundreds of projects in the utilities and alternative energy industries in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. Our clients include power generators, electric and gas utilities, multi-utility conglomerates, alternative energy providers, energy trading companies, gas storage and distribution players, fuel cell vendors, water and waste utilities, and diversified global energy leaders.

We have experience across the entire value chain, including expertise in energy generation, trading and storage, transmission, distribution and retail. Our clients also benefit from our expertise in capability areas, such as optimizing the organization, increasing efficiency of support functions and responding to deregulation.

At the corporate level, our corporate strategy work focuses on the most important sources of business value based on a keen understanding of emerging technologies as well as competitive and regulatory environments. Our experts can help your teams:

• Develop a corporate investment strategy
• Evaluate market trends and their impact on utilities
• Implement energy efficiency strategies and new business models
• Define portfolio and international expansion strategies
• Instill a high-performance culture and decision-driven organization throughout the business

At the business-unit level, Bain helps clients:

• Optimize future generation mix
• Cope with decarbonization requirements and capitalize on technology trends
• Improve energy trading and develop storage strategies
• Increase the operating performance in transmission and distribution, field force and other areas
• Retain and expand their customer bases
• Deploy assets and IT investments for maximum return
• Expand into the right adjacencies

Through our Private Equity group and Mergers & Acquisitions practice we can deploy a team of seasoned experts to help our utility clients evaluate potential deals through due-diligence and execute M&A and post-merger integration.

Around the globe, the utility industry faces waves of change brought on by a number of regional and global, public and private sector shifts. As the global initiative for a sustainable energy mix continues to take shape, utilities companies that invest wisely stand to benefit from these industry changes.

Bain works alongside utility companies, at all levels of the organization, to evaluate the risks and opportunities inherent in new technologies and industry trends, such as renewable energy and power storage; and intelligent infrastructure, such as smart grids and smart metering. Over the next 10 years, utilities around the world will make significant investments to renew their generating capacity and meet the growing demand for power. These decisions will require tough choices due to several boundary conditions: the pressure on the balance sheets of most utilities, a higher level of competition, increasing commodity prices, the financial constraints of governments that will limit the potential for subsidies, the evolving regulatory environment that will mandate reduced CO2 targets, and customers’ concerns about the environment and security of supply—and their higher willingness to switch supplier.

We work with our clients to prevent and remedy the financial pressure and pain points of these new realities, and help them create value through sustainable business development.

Companies that successfully increase revenue and profits tend to do so by developing their core businesses to their full potential and then pursuing disciplined expansion into attractive adjacencies. Electric vehicles, for example, open up a suite of opportunities for utility companies outside their immediate core. The question is: how to identify dependable, low-risk adjacencies with favorable economics to invest in? Bain can help.

We develop insights that work for our clients. Our approach and recommendations are highly customized and lead to practical actions. Below is a selection of our experts' perspectives on important issues—for our clients and their industries. Visit Bain Insights to read more.

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