I've been in enough boardroom discussions this year to notice a shift. The questions about industrial power in 2026 are fundamentally different from what I was hearing 12 months ago. The discussions are no longer about whether you have enough electricity; we’re now having conversations about how to control it before your competitors do.
Last year made something clear to everyone in our industry. We watched grid operators issue capacity warnings and saw Europe curtail €3 billion worth of renewable generation. Critical infrastructure experienced outages affecting millions. And the AI and data center boom has now pushed power requirements to levels that seemed implausible when I started in this role.
At the same time, countries are revisiting nuclear, grids are straining under new loads, and businesses are realising the old “install and maintain” mindset no longer works. Electrical infrastructure that was supposed to last 30 years now needs significant upgrades every decade. Continuous modernisation is becoming the norm because the world around us refuses to stand still.
As we start the new year, I wanted to share the broader trends I'm seeing that are driving this shift.
From pilot projects to board-level priority
I've watched energy storage cross a threshold in the past 18 months. Projects that started as sustainability experiments are now showing up on capital allocation agendas as core infrastructure. This is most visible in our conversations with customers in markets spanning the UK, Ireland, Australia and even Japan, where volatile costs and capacity constraints have turned power management into a genuine P&L issue.
And it is finance teams, not only operations, driving these decisions now because energy costs are directly shaping competitiveness. When I'm in those conversations, the calculation is brutal: manage your energy costs or surrender advantage to competitors who do.
Customers my team are working with aren't waiting around. They're deploying energy storage solutions and treating energy management as a competitive advantage rather than just another cost line. Our Batteries Without Barriers whitepaper ABB co-authored with GridBeyond explores how businesses are doing this, with real feasibility studies showing companies reducing energy costs by up to 80% whilst generating new revenue from day one.
The structural risks reshaping industrial reliability
The reality facing industrial leaders is becoming increasingly clear. Electrical systems are growing more complex at a pace the industry has never experienced, while the specialised expertise required to maintain them is steadily diminishing. Rapid growth in AI workloads and widespread electrification have accelerated demand to the point where infrastructure designed for multi‑decade lifecycles now requires significant upgrades within ten years, and in many cases even sooner.
To stay ahead of this pressure, organisations are relying more heavily on technologies that extend and amplify human capability. Remote diagnostics, augmented reality, predictive monitoring and AI‑enabled analytics are moving from optional enhancements to essential operational safeguards.
Our recent IPEC acquisition is a good example of this, strengthening our digital portfolio to help customers detect the electrical failures that cause more than 80 percent of asset breakdowns before they ever happen.
These technical challenges are compounded by a tightening workforce pipeline. Nearly 20 percent of the UK’s engineering workforce will be retired by next year, which means decades of practical knowledge are leaving the industry faster than new talent can be trained. This imbalance cannot be addressed through traditional mentoring or incremental training approaches, simply because the timeline is too compressed.
At the same time, the role of the electrical engineer is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Today’s engineers must couple deep domain expertise with advanced data fluency, using analytics and automation to design systems that diagnose their own condition, optimise autonomously and evolve over time. This integration of engineering skill and intelligence‑driven capability is no longer a future aspiration. It has become a core requirement for maintaining resilient, high‑performance electrical systems in an increasingly demanding industrial environment.
What this means for 2026
More than anything, 2026 is the year when companies will be forced to treat energy as a strategic asset, not a background utility. This isn’t optional anymore. Every conversation I’m having with industrial leaders points to the same reality.
The companies taking control of their power infrastructure and energy systems, and using them as levers for competitiveness, are the ones pulling ahead. Energy has become a board-level concern because it now shapes cost, resilience, growth and market position in ways we haven’t seen before.
The old approach of installing equipment and leaving it in place until end of life is disappearing. It’s being replaced with strategic asset planning, proactive maintenance, phased modernisation that lets companies stay online while integrating smarter, more adaptable technology.
I’ve found that the businesses getting ahead in their energy portfolios aren't necessarily the biggest or the best resourced; they're the ones recognising that in volatile markets, waiting for someone else to solve your energy problem means watching competitors secure advantages you're still paying premium prices to access.
My team at ABB Electrification Service exists to help industries outrun challenges like these. Whether it’s predictive monitoring technology that catches failures before they cascade into a full-blown outage, upgrading outdated components to reduce operating costs by a third and extend equipment lifespan by as much as 30 years, or new "as-a-Service" models that eliminate the capital barrier to energy control, we’re building the capabilities businesses need to stay ahead.
