I work for a large Electric utility in an Engineering office.
I usually dont get the whole company picture, but from my region (the midwest) I could specifically name about $1Billion in capital projects that my company is considering - they all center around pollution controls at existing power plants. This situation is very uncertain. So uncertain the utilities are rushing to get into contracts with the large construction firms (Shaw...) so that they can 'lock-in' prices on these large projects IF they decide to do them.
analogy:
I would never go to a car dealership, and pay the car salesman a few $hundred just to stick around near his phone in case I call needing a car. I would only do this if the supply of cars was very uncertain and there was a chance that if I needed a car in a year, I wouldnt be able to find one.
Luckily I have peachparts if I need a decent car quickly
Please don't doubt the uncertaintly claim. The nice thing about companies is that thier motives are transparent - making money. If they are spending money to hedge risk (locking in price contracts) then they are pretty convinced that the risks/uncertainty is real.
-John