Electric Capital Spending Has Skyrocketed, and It's Only the Start

Almost five years ago we predicted that electricity sales would start to grow again and that utility capital expenditures would soar. And we said that the industry was not spending enough. Apart from patting ourselves on the back, here are the latest numbers confirming our long-held view. Figure 1 shows the five-year spending of investor-owned utilities (IOUs) on electric plants in current dollars. Note how the numbers peaked in the early eighties, fell off, and finally picked up in this century. More meaningfully, Figure 2 shows the five-year…