To maintain and expand company security in the energy sector, such as an LNG company, a board would want to consider the full scope of their required decision making and vision for the future of the company. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a powerful enterprise or natural gas company needs to have clarity regarding the company’s customers, the type of energy materials delivered and the impact of the business’s choices on global sustainability.
With today’s transition into a carbon-free emissions environment, a key question a successful CEO will adeptly answer is who their customers will be over the next ten years, specifically, and generally, beyond 2030, as well. Will the company remain local, regional, national in its focus on service delivery? Or, will it expand to provide power to others on different continents? If so, will it position itself as a specialty gas supplier or a biomass supplier?
The power company’s aims will largely center around the type of raw energy sources it plans to transform. What is the company’s position on coal, petroleum, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and renewable energy? If the company does not plan to eliminate carbon dioxide (CO2)emitting fuel sources, how will it balance and justify its actions to the United Nations (UN) with its global sustainability initiatives? If the company leans towards eliminating their carbon footprint, will local and regional coal workers and farmers cry out against it or for it? Which renewable energy options can the company embrace? Windmills? Offshore or onshore or both? Hot springs? Solar energy? Hydroelectric processors? And how will the community balance farming for food versus farming for energy? How would the CEO divide corn, willow tree, soybean, sugarcane, wheat, etc., crops between the need to fuel our bodies and the rest of our lives?
The CEO of a natural gas company will have to investigate and analyze the pros and cons of each possible energy source, its storage and delivery requirements, and transition options onto the energy grid. They must contemplate these questions as they pertain to a healthy future for the earth – its air, its soil, and its inhabitants. This could prove difficult to ascertain given the recently extreme changes experienced regarding the weather. We know that the earth is alive, constantly in motion and bubbling with activity on, beneath, and above the surface. What are some of the actions that we contribute, such as steel and concrete developments, as human beings and how do these actions impact the earth today and how will they impact it tomorrow?
Perhaps a visit or two with Isabelle Kocher of Engie, a global energy and LNG company located in France, wouldn’t hurt in the discussion of a specialty gas supplier. The influence of the decisions of a CEO of an entity in the energy industry will not ring as nebulous as those of, say, a fund manager. The many variables nearly relegate one to the status of a meteorologist. But the connections between the undertakings of a power enterprise will clearly show cause and effect.