The age of electricity: More demand requires smarter energy strategies
Global electricity demand is accelerating. According to the International Energy Agency, electricity consumption is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 3.6% between 2026 and 2030, driven by the electrification of industry, transport and buildings, as well as by the rapid expansion of data centres, artificial intelligence and air conditioning.
Over the next five years, the world is expected to add, on average, 50% more electricity demand each year than it did during the previous decade. Electricity demand is also forecast to grow at least 2.5 times faster than overall energy demand through 2030.
These figures confirm that the global economy is entering what the IEA describes as the Age of Electricity.
However, the strategic issue for companies is not simply that more electricity will be consumed. It is that a growing share of industrial production, mobility, heating, cooling and digital infrastructure will depend directly on the electricity system.
This creates opportunities, but it also introduces new risks.
Electrification changes the nature of energy risk
For many businesses, electrification is an essential part of reducing fossil-fuel consumption and achieving decarbonisation targets. Industrial processes are being converted from gas to electricity, vehicle fleets are becoming electric, buildings increasingly rely on heat pumps, and digital infrastructure is expanding rapidly.
Data centres illustrate the scale of this change. The IEA expects their global electricity consumption to approximately double by 2030, reaching around 945 TWh. Their demand is forecast to grow by about 15% per year between 2024 and 2030, more than four times faster than electricity consumption in the rest of the economy.
But electrification also increases companies’ exposure to electricity prices, grid availability, connection capacity and power quality.
An industrial facility may replace fossil fuels with electricity and reduce its direct emissions, but it may simultaneously become more vulnerable to price volatility, grid congestion or delays in securing additional capacity.
Electrification therefore cannot be treated as a simple replacement of one energy source with another. It must be accompanied by a broader strategy to manage how electricity is generated, consumed, stored and purchased.
Europe will need to accelerate
The European Commission has set out an ambition to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption from approximately 23% today to 46% by 2040. It estimates that this could reduce the European Union’s annual fossil-fuel import bill by around €260 billion.
This direction is strategically important for European competitiveness and energy independence. Yet achieving it will require much more than adding renewable generation capacity.
Electricity networks will need substantial expansion, reinforcement and digitalisation. Storage, demand response and other forms of flexibility will be required to balance increasingly variable renewable generation with increasingly complex patterns of consumption.
ACER highlights that flexibility allows energy storage, demand response and flexible generation to balance supply and demand, reduce congestion and shift renewable electricity from periods of surplus to periods of greater need.
However, this potential remains largely underused. The IEA estimates that only around 100 GW of demand response was being utilised globally in 2024, despite the much larger technical potential available in industry and other sectors.
From energy procurement to energy management
For companies, the traditional response to energy risk has often been to negotiate a better electricity supply contract.
That remains important, but it is no longer sufficient.
As electricity becomes more central to business operations, companies will need to manage energy as an integrated operational capability. This means addressing several questions simultaneously:
How much energy can be produced locally?
How can consumption be reduced without affecting production?
When should electricity be consumed, stored or drawn from the grid?
Can flexible loads be shifted away from the most expensive periods?
How can future electrification be planned around existing grid capacity?
The answers will depend on each site, sector and consumption profile. Nevertheless, the strategic direction is clear: companies must move from being passive electricity consumers to becoming active energy managers.
Helexia’s perspective: reduce exposure while enabling growth
At Helexia, we believe the Age of Electricity should not be approached exclusively as a challenge of increasing supply. It is also a challenge of controlling demand and reducing exposure.
The objective is not simply to help companies consume more electricity. It is to help them electrify and grow without increasing their energy costs, carbon emissions and dependence on the grid at the same rate.
This requires combining complementary solutions:
- On-site renewable energy generation;
- Energy efficiency;
- Battery storage;
- Electrification of processes and mobility;
- Flexibility and demand response;
- Continuous monitoring and active energy management.
Solar self-consumption can reduce the volume of electricity purchased from the grid. Energy-efficiency measures can lower the total amount of energy required. Storage can improve the use of locally generated renewable energy and help manage consumption peaks. Energy-management systems can provide the data and operational intelligence required to coordinate all these assets.
The value is therefore not created by any single technology. It comes from integrating technologies around the company’s operational profile, investment capacity and long-term energy strategy.
Electricity will be a competitiveness issue
The continued growth of electricity demand confirms that electrification is not a temporary market trend. It is becoming one of the defining structural transformations of the global economy.
For companies, the central question is no longer whether electricity consumption will increase. It is whether they will remain passive recipients of the consequences or actively prepare their operations.
The businesses that combine electrification with local generation, efficiency, storage, flexibility and intelligent energy management will be better positioned to control costs, improve resilience and protect competitiveness.
The Age of Electricity will require more power. But above all, it will require a much smarter way of managing it.
