Electric vehicles are coming and utilities are getting ready

Mary Barra, chief executive officer of General Motors Co. (GM), speaks during the 2018 CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston, Texas, U.S., on Wednesday, March 7, 2018. CERAWeek gathers energy industry leaders, experts, government officials and policymakers, leaders from the technology, financial, and industrial communities to provide new insights and critically-important dialogue on energy markets. Photographer: Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg less Mary Barra, chief executive officer of General Motors Co. (GM), speaks during the 2018 CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston, Texas, U.S., on Wednesday, March 7, 2018. CERAWeek gathers energy industry ... more Photo: Aaron M. Sprecher, Bloomberg Photo: Aaron M. Sprecher, Bloomberg Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Electric vehicles are coming and utilities are getting ready 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Some of the country's major electric utilities have embraced the growth of electric vehicles and are preparing for a world where car-charging stations could have a sizable impact on their power demand.

During CERAWeek by IHS Markit, a week-long energy summit in Houston, the rise of electric cars emerged as a unifying theme for the oil and gas and power industries. The CEOs of some of the world's leading oil companies, including the British oil giant BP, joined the heads General Motors and California, Texas and New Mexico-based utilities in discussing the spread of electric cars.

But two sides of the energy industry -- the producers and the consumers, effectively -- don't agree on how fast that growth will occur.

While BP's CEO Bob Dudley played down the threat that electric vehicles pose to the oil industry, automotive, battery and utility executives came to Houston with a different message: The threat is real and more serious than energy companies think.

"There is a major disruption coming and everyone needs to plan for this in the automotive sector," said James Calaway, CEO of Calaway Interests, a company that produces lithium batteries and sells them predominantly to the auto industry. "By 2030, one should expect disruption, full-blown disruption."

On Wednesday, General Motors CEO Mary Barra offered a similar outlook, saying that that the world is already in the "midst of a transportation revolution."

Electric utilities around the country are bracing for a rise in power demand that will come with the rise of electric vehicles. While California is among the leaders in the country for electric cars -- with hundreds of thousands on the road -- Texas utilities Oncor and CenterPoint Energy are also thinking about how charging electric cars will affect their distribution systems.

"What will happen, as states like California begin to use new technology, these technologies will find an economic story in Texas and they will begin to be adopted," said Scott Prochazka, the CEO of CenterPoint, the utility that serves Houston. "The role of the electric grid here in Texas is really to be an enabler for customers to make decisions that they want to pursue."

Don Clevenger, the senior vice president of strategic planning for Oncor, the state's largest utility, agreed, saying that the company hopes the oil and gas industry will support the spread of electric cars, particularly in Texas.

Clevenger also joined a growing list of executives at CERAWeek who spoke about their electric cars -- a list that includes Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of the French oil giant Total, and Patricia Vincent-Collawm, CEO of PNM Resources.

"I did order my first electric vehicle last month. It's a Tesla, it comes in a another month," Clevenger said on Thursday. "In a couple of months I'll never get gas again."