2008 marks the tenth birthday of the Platts Global Energy Awards - ten years in which the Awards have grown in stature, evolved in quality, and come to be recognized by the energy industry at large as the hallmarks of excellence, the prizes everyone wants to win.
It seems a long time since the inaugural GEA ceremony. Back in 1998, Platts Dated Brent price, the world's key oil benchmark, averaged (wait for it) $12.72 per barrel. No one had heard of bio-diesel. Chinese energy consumption was half what it is today. No one seemed likely ever to build a nuclear power station again.
Small wonder that in a decade of tumultuous change for the energy industry, the Awards themselves have also changed. It's instructive to take a look at how.
Originally the brainchild of the Financial Times Energy group, Platts acquired the Awards in 2002 and set about a thoroughgoing transformation, overhauling the judging process and instituting a rigorous annual review of both the methodology for deciding the awards and the actual industry areas for which awards are given, to ensure they remain relevant.
As a result, every year's award ceremony is different, and - we believe - every year the quality of the winners rises.
From a small, originally mostly US-based panel of judges, Platts has expanded its independent judging group over the years and thoroughly internationalized it. The group boasts a vast range of experience: it's included former OPEC energy ministers, former national regulators, heads of energy companies, leading academics and energy politicians. An active group, the judges have played an important part in developing the awards and enhancing their quality.
The number of awards has grown steadily, from around fourteen annual awards to eighteen today. That growth, we believe, broadly reflects the growing diversity of the industry itself, and reflects changes in the priorities of the industry - the very way it sees itself.
Those changes become clearer still when you consider the type of awards Platts is giving today, compared with a decade ago. Back then, the industry still classified itself very much by fuel type - businesses saw themselves much more as "oil companies", "gas companies","coal companies", "power generators" and so on. As a result, the Awards were geared to identifying winners in these sectoral classifications.
But by the middle of this decade, the world had moved on, and so did the awards. Successful energy companies had diversified away from strict focus on single activities, or narrow areas of business, and the categories for the awards began to reflect this. Awards such as "Downstream Company of the Year", "Hydrocarbon Producer of the Year" and "Energy Transporter of the Year" came to predominate, reflecting the increasing portfolio trends in the industry itself.
We also saw a diversification of the awards, recognizing that in a changing world, there needed to be room for new areas of business, for new types of business, and simply for for newcomers. Thus it was that awards in categories such as "Industry Leadership", "Rising Stars", "Green Energy", "Energy Pioneer" and "Risk Management Innovator" were born. Some have survived. Others have evolved or mutated as the industry has changed.
In 2008, we are proud to present three new awards: Sustainable Energy Initiative of the Year - an award that has grown out of past renewable energy, green energy and energy efficiency categories, Sustainable Technology Innovation of the Year, and Strategic Energy Investment of the Year.
