AES Corporation: Difference between revisions

The company was founded on January 28, 1981, as Applied Energy Services<ref>{{cite web |url=http://investor.aes.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=76149&p=irol-faq#6563 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061022225418/http://investor.aes.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=76149&p=irol-faq#6563 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2006-10-22 |title=AES - Frequently Asked Questions |publisher=Investor.aes.com |access-date=2012-10-07 }}</ref> by [[Roger Sant]] and [[Dennis Bakke]], two appointees of the Federal Energy Administration under president [[Richard Nixon]]. The company was initially a consulting firm; it became AES Corporation, which went public in 1991. Sant was chairman, CEO, and president and Bakke was executive vice president until assuming the position of president in 1987. Bakke would later become the company's CEO in 1994, serving for 8 years until his resignation in 2002, in the midst of a liquidity crisis that followed the collapse of the energy giant [[Enron]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gross |first=Daniel |date=2003-03-11 |title=When Bad Things Happen to Good Companies |language=en-US |work=Slate |url=https://slate.com/business/2003/03/the-fall-of-the-anti-enron.html |issn=1091-2339}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2005-11-25 |title=Ex-AES CEO now puts his energy in education |url=https://www.nhbr.com/ex-aes-ceo-now-puts-his-energy-in-education/ |website=NH Business Review |language=en-US}}</ref> Sant remained as executive chairman until 2003 and as a member of the board until 2006. Paul Hanrahan was appointed President and CEO and remained for ten years, overseeing the stabilization of the company. Until the early 2000's, the company followed self-management, delegating much responsibility to ordinary employees.<ref>{{cite book|last=Laloux|first=Frederic|title=Reinventing Organizations}}</ref> In 2012, Hanrahan resigned, his position as President and CEO of the company succeeded by Andres Gluski. As CEO, Gluski has implemented a strategy of reducing the number of countries in which AES does business, from 28 to 16, for the purpose of consolidating operations and reducing costs. Additionally, he also began a program of reducing the company's total carbon emission intensity.

Bakke and Sant oversaw much of AES's initial global expansion, building power plants in 29 countries and expanding its staff from 1,400 to 32,000 employees, and also instilled a system of decentralized management that emphasized social responsibility above profit. In recent years, AES has also signaled a commitment to providing its consumers and clients with renewable forms of energy, and their operations across the world have increasingly focused on the construction and provision of solar and wind-based energy storage systems.