Message
The electric and natural gas utilities industry provides essential public services to residential, commercial and industrial energy consumers. For many decades, utility energy services have been expected to satisfy two key objectives: reliability and affordability. Today, the energy industry is becoming subject to two additional expectations: decarbonize energy sources and serve large new uses of electricity.
Meeting all four of these objectives has become the defining challenge for the future energy utilities industry. Achieving success will depend on knowledgeable and capable leaders who can guide their organizations to implement innovative, practical solutions.
The 2024 Utility Management Certificate (UMC) Program is designed to help prepare high-potential professionals to guide their organizations through the energy utilities industry transformation.
Biography
Charlie Black was appointed UMC Program Director in late March 2024. His broad perspective and wide-ranging skill set is based on 40 years of experience in the electric and natural gas utilities industry. He has worked at and provided expert consulting services to organizations from Southern California to Alaska, including municipal, cooperative, PUD and investor-owned utilities, as well as regulatory agencies and large power generation companies.
Charlie has held a variety of technical and leadership positions at publicly owned utilities, investor-owned utilities and a multi-state regional power planning agency. He has been involved in industry restructuring and policy matters throughout his career, beginning with deregulation of the natural gas industry in the mid-1980s, continuing through multiple phases of electric transmission and wholesale power markets restructuring, and more recently on development and implementation of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
During 2013-2022, Charlie designed, developed and hosted or co-hosted a highly successful series of conferences on energy utilities industry issues and market trends. Conference topics included wholesale power market conditions and restructuring, regional electric transmission development and operation, resource adequacy, power system decarbonization and utility customer relations. He has developed and provided professional training on a variety of topics including integrated resource planning, distributed energy resources, and regional power markets. Charlie has also been a frequent speaker and panel moderator at conferences, seminars, association meetings and public hearings.