Robin Hale, Chief Executive, MEUC
When it comes to energy and water, complexity is now the constant. Utility users face a convergence of demands: from carbon reduction and cost control to shifting policies and the need for operational resilience. This is not a phase to be ridden out. It is a new environment that calls for sharper strategy and stronger collaboration.
Yet within this pressure lies potential. The UK Government’s Industrial Strategy has framed infrastructure investment, clean growth and innovation as national imperatives. Utility management is central to that agenda. It connects operations to outcomes and risk to resilience.
Beyond the Baseline
The way large organisations engage with utilities has moved far beyond fixed rates and volume deals. Today’s strategies are built around flexibility, balancing risk with forward hedging and often spreading decisions across seasonal windows and multi-year horizons.
What defines the more capable teams is not size but adaptability. They are using digital tools more intelligently, questioning data with purpose, and embedding decisions within broader planning frameworks. These professionals have stepped beyond back-office functions. They are delivery leaders, shaping outcomes across cost, carbon and consumption.
At MEUC, we see how the role of energy and water teams continues to evolve. They have moved from purchasers to pioneers, becoming enablers of change.
From Aspiration to Implementation
Delivering cleaner operations is rarely straightforward. Goals may be clear, but turning them into viable action plans requires patience, technical alignment and internal consensus. This is especially true across large estates or complex portfolios.
Onsite generation, power purchase agreements, flexibility, connections, water efficiency and decarbonisation all hold promise. But they also require legal input, engineering review, business case approvals and, often, cultural change. Those making the most credible progress are not always the loudest, just the most persistent.
This is where real conversation matters. The most valuable insights often emerge not in place of structured case studies or sharp presentations, but around them, through honest exchanges that reveal the context, challenges and compromises behind the slides
Precision Over Panic
With rising costs, it’s tempting to focus solely on reductions. Yet leaner systems are not about cutting corners. They are about improving precision. Demand side management, smart metering, and behaviour-focused initiatives can all offer small gains that scale.
The Government’s Clean Growth Strategy supports this direction. Energy and water teams are no longer peripheral. They are agents of delivery, putting strategic decisions into action. Each gain reinforces competitiveness and environmental credibility; and the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) continues to highlight the growing expectation for large organisations to deliver real, trackable savings.
Resilience Is Designed, Not Declared
Strategic risk now comes from all angles, contract terms, market volatility, policy change, and supply gaps. Resilience cannot be added after the fact. It must be designed into utility strategies from the outset.
Flexible contracting, regulatory fluency and market awareness now represent the minimum capability needed to remain credible. Equally, human resilience matters. Organisations are upskilling teams, strengthening peer networks and broadening their perspective.
The Value of Listening, Not Just Looking
In a digital world, face-to-face dialogue is still very much needed. Not for novelty, but for nuance. Contributor sessions and solution showcases remain the useful context to drive the conversations around them that deliver lasting value.
That’s what defines events like MEUC’s Autumn BUU Live Conference and Exhibition. The focus is not on showmanship, but substance. People attend to explore, question and connect with others who understand what’s at stake.
As one regulatory lead from a water retailer put it:
“It’s really great coming to MEUC events because I get to hear first-hand from customers what they want from retailers and the wider market.”
And from the user side, a senior category manager in a major utility user noted:
“Great opportunity to network with large corporates in the energy sector and to understand their challenges within the industry and help discussions within our organisation.”
A Strategic Pause With Purpose
Although no single event provides all the answers, the need to step out of the everyday, to reflect, recalibrate and challenge assumptions has never been more important. Expectations are rising and margins for error are tightening.
BUU Live is not a spectacle. It’s a strategic pause, an opportunity for industrial and commercial energy and water users to sharpen their questions, deepen their insight, and return to the everyday more prepared.
If you are responsible for buying or using utilities, this is where the next wave of leadership, clarity and connection is taking shape. Visit meucnetwork.co.uk — you really should be in the room.
This article appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of Energy Manager magazine. Subscribe here.