Albert Cho on institutional reform
From Why Utilities Need Resilience Partners - with Xylem's Al Cho · · Global Water Intelligence TV
“I think there are three big challenges to delivering the capex surge for resilience: technological, financial, and institutional — and the institutional questions of who's responsible for resilience have to be decided locality by locality.”
On , Albert Cho, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy & External Affairs Officer at Xylem Inc., spoke about institutional reform during Why Utilities Need Resilience Partners - with Xylem's Al Cho on Global Water Intelligence TV.
About Albert Cho
Albert Cho, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy & External Affairs Officer at Xylem, has spoken about the need for utilities to adopt collaborative partnerships to address rising capital expenditure deficits for water resilience. In a July 2025 interview, Cho cited a McKinsey report projecting a $100 billion annual capex deficit in the United States that could grow to nearly $200 billion, and noted that resilience-related capital spending as a share of total spending is expected to rise from 21% in 2024 to nearly 40% in 2027 in the U.S. He described three challenges—technological, financial, and institutional—to delivering this surge, and argued that utilities should not be asked to take on more without support. Cho also advocated for scaling water reuse technologies and for viewing solution providers as collaborative partners rather than vendors. Cho has also discussed the intersection of climate change and aging water infrastructure, stating that the technologies to address these issues exist and are becoming more affordable. He cited examples of digital solutions reducing costs, such as a project in South Bend, Indiana that cut stormwater overflow by 80% at a $500 million cost reduction, and a digital twin in Grand Rapids, Michigan that reduced a capital program from over $1 billion to under $50 million. Cho has emphasized the importance of digitizing water infrastructure to improve reliability, quality, and affordability, and has called for treating every drop of water as equally valuable.