The Future of Governance in Public Utilities: Key Factors And Emerging trends (case of study: Power Distribution)

This paper aims to foresighting the future direction of governance in the field of public utilities, through recognition of emerging trends and key factors effective on construction of Future interactions in the field of electricity distribution.
For this purpose, by using the method and approach of environmental scanning, it is tried to Identifying, describing and prioritizing the key factors affecting future developments. Also, the emerging trends in this field is analyzed in expert panels..
As a result, 23 key factors (variables) affecting on future alternatives in Electricity Distribution has been introduced in 7 categories (including Political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal and industrial). After that, three important emerging trends in the direction of future developments (“Democratization of energy interactions”, “Development of technical/social innovations in the field of supply and distribution of energy” and “Developing the human, social and cultural dimensions of energy systems”) is explained.
Based on the findings the future of governance in power distribution can be figured in the term of decentralization macro trend and key issues such as voluntary cooperation, social contributions, local collective actions and citizenry self-governance.