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| SEPTEMBER 2021 | UTILITY WEEK
Analysis
Digital transformation
transformed
Research from Utility Week shows the UK's commitment to net
zero emissions is heavily influencing the outcomes energy and
water companies want to achieve via digital transformation.
A
cross sectors, businesses are adapt-
ing themselves – oen radically – for
a future operating environment in
which net zero carbon is a "given". Nowhere
is this truer than in the UK utilities industry,
where over 90 per cent of companies say the
UK's commitment to neutralising its carbon
emissions by 2050 has triggered or acceler-
ated a substantial organisational change
programme.
This finding emerged from a recent piece
of industry research conducted by Utility
Week, in association with low-code auto-
mation specialist Appian in which we also
sought to understand how companies are
adapting pre-existing digital transformation
programmes to take account of their new
organisational objectives.
The survey showed a widespread, but not
always strong, appreciation that alterations
to organisational purpose or the kinds of
opportunities to be pursued by firms in a net
zero future, should have a direct influence
over the ways technology is applied.
Just under half of those surveyed (46 per
cent) said net zero has had a "significant"
impact on their organisation's digital strat-
egy; a further 43 per cent said there had been
an impact, but only a slight one.
The dominant factor driving this change
in thinking about digital transformation
proved to be the common introduction of
"stretching" targets for reducing the impact
