Next Thursday, January 14th, we will present our annual Top 10 predictions for the North American utility industry in a webcast that will be broadcast live from 11:00 a.m. to noon, U.S. Eastern time.  Use this link http://bit.ly/6xOLhF to register for free.

North American utility companies were negatively impacted in 2009 by the recession, which decreased energy consumption and thus reduced utility revenues, as well as by the credit crisis - both of which forced utilities to curtail spending and conserve cash.  In 2010 we expect North American utilities, particularly electric utilities, to benefit from the general economic recovery but more importantly from government intervention in the form of stimulus funding, tax breaks and other favorable policy initiatives.

To give you a preview of the content (and hopefully convince you to participate in the webcast) here are the topics we will be covering:

1. Energy efficiency and demand response
2. Renewable energy
3. Energy storage
4. Intelligent grid
5. Electric vehicles
6. Energy trading and risk management
7. Traditional power generation
8. The water market
9. Smart cities
10. IT spending

As an additional teaser, here is one of our bolder predictions:

"U.S. utility industry IT spending growth will increase to 11% in 2010, significantly higher than the total IT spending growth rate of 2.6% across all industries."

Hope you can join us!