Global Challenge 13: How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?
Updated September 10, 2026
Meeting growing energy demand requires affordable, reliable supplies while extending access and reducing pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions. Electricity is becoming increasingly important: global electricity consumption grew 3% in 2025, compared with 1.7% growth in total energy supply. Rising incomes, industrialization, cooling, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and data centers are increasing demand. The pace of electrification makes the development of generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and flexible demand increasingly interdependent.
Access remains deeply unequal. In 2024, 655 million people lacked electricity, including more than 560 million in sub-Saharan Africa, while approximately two billion people lacked clean cooking. Extending access involves reliable service, affordable connection charges, household equipment, and continuing fuel or electricity costs. Grid expansion, mini-grids, stand-alone solar, and clean cooking technologies offer different solutions according to local conditions. Financing, utility performance, and household affordability often constrain progress even where suitable technologies are available.
Renewable electricity capacity is expanding rapidly. IRENA reports that 692 gigawatts of renewable capacity were added in 2025, accounting for 85.6% of global net generating-capacity additions. These figures describe capacity, not electricity generated: output depends on resource availability, operating conditions, and whether networks can deliver it. Fossil fuels remain important across the energy system, and global energy-related emissions continued to increase in 2025.
The economics of new generation increasingly favor renewables. IRENA estimates that more than 90% of utility-scale renewable projects commissioned in 2025 had lower generation costs than the cheapest new fossil-fuel alternative in their market. However, low generation costs do not automatically produce low consumer bills. Reliable supply also requires networks, reserves, storage, and other system services. Financing costs, taxes, market arrangements, and existing infrastructure affect what households and businesses ultimately pay.
Grids are a major constraint. At the end of 2025, approximately 8,200 proposed projects were seeking U.S. transmission-grid connections. For projects entering operation that year, the median time from connection request to commercial operation exceeded five years in regions with available data. Many queued projects will never be built. Expanding networks requires investment alongside effective planning, permitting, skilled workers, equipment supply, and clear allocation of costs.
Reliable systems also need flexibility. Batteries can shift electricity between hours and support grid stability, while longer periods of low renewable output require combinations of storage, interconnection, flexible consumption, and generation available when needed. Hydropower, geothermal, and nuclear can provide low-carbon supply where resources and conditions permit. Nuclear power can contribute dependable electricity, but financing and construction performance remain significant challenges. Continued operation and new construction also require effective safety regulation, waste management, and public confidence.
The energy challenge extends beyond electricity. Industry needs heat and, in some processes, fuels or chemical feedstocks. Electric boilers, heat pumps, and other electrical processes can replace fossil energy in suitable applications, but converting existing facilities can require substantial investment. Aviation, shipping, and parts of industry will also need lower-emission fuels. Options include sustainable biofuels, low-emission hydrogen, and synthetic fuels, with different costs and resource requirements. Their benefits depend on how they are produced and their emissions across the supply chain. Hydrogen made through electrolysis requires electricity; it does not provide an independent primary energy source.
Efficiency can reduce the infrastructure needed to deliver better energy services. More efficient buildings, motors, appliances, and industrial processes can limit demand growth, while flexible consumption can reduce costly peaks. Cooling is particularly important: UNEP projects that demand could more than triple by 2050 under business-as-usual conditions. Building design, shading, ventilation, and efficient equipment can moderate that growth. Meanwhile, heat, drought, floods, storms, and wildfire threaten energy infrastructure, increasing the importance of climate resilience.
Energy security encompasses fuel supplies, transport routes, technology supply chains, and physical and digital infrastructure. The 2026 disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has renewed attention to diversification and supply resilience. Electrification changes these dependencies: mineral processing, equipment manufacturing, and nuclear fuel supply can also be concentrated. Diversification, recycling, material substitution, maintenance, and cybersecurity can reduce exposure, while environmental and labor safeguards remain necessary throughout supply chains.
Artificial intelligence and data centers create additional uncertainty. Their electricity requirements can be highly concentrated geographically. Berkeley Lab’s scenarios place data centers at 9.5–15.3% of U.S. electricity consumption by 2030; this is a projection for one country, not a global estimate. AI can also improve forecasting, maintenance, and energy management. Its overall effect will depend on deployment, efficiency, demand growth, and whether useful applications deliver measurable savings.
Innovation could broaden future options through advanced geothermal, improved batteries, long-duration storage, new nuclear designs, and lower-emission industrial processes. Commercial technologies, first demonstrations, and experimental concepts such as fusion have different evidence, financing, and deployment requirements. Research and demonstration can expand future choices while near-term planning relies on credible delivery schedules. A central challenge for the coming decade is coordinating technology, finance, infrastructure, and institutions quickly enough to improve access, affordability, reliability, and environmental performance together.
Updated September 10, 2026
Adapt these priorities to national resources, institutions, and development needs. Assign responsibilities, budgets, and dated targets, then report progress against published baselines. The indicators below are suggested measures; the linked sources provide supporting evidence and examples.
- Expand grids and improve connections through coordinated system planning.
Actors: energy ministries, regulators, system operators, utilities, and planning authorities.
Coordinate investment in low-carbon generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and flexible demand. Fund network upgrades and technical staffing; establish clear cost-sharing rules and early community consultation. Introduce enforceable study deadlines, project-readiness requirements, and public connection-capacity information, while completing necessary reliability assessments. Review investment plans against realistic demand scenarios.
Track: connection times, capacity entering service, and the frequency and duration of outages.
- Reduce financing barriers for viable energy projects.
Actors: development banks, finance ministries, domestic lenders, and energy regulators.
Address currency, payment, regulatory, and project risks through appropriately priced guarantees, local-currency finance, currency-risk protection, and project preparation. Improve utility payment performance and contract transparency. Target public support where it enables useful investment that would otherwise struggle to proceed, and disclose the financial exposure assumed by governments.
Track: financing costs for comparable projects, completed investments, and public guarantee exposure.
- Fund reliable and affordable electricity access.
Actors: national electrification agencies, local governments, utilities, development banks, and community or private providers.
Implement least-cost electrification plans combining grid extension, mini-grids, and stand-alone systems according to local conditions. Support affordable connection charges, household wiring, maintenance, and productive uses of electricity. Improve metering, loss reduction, and utility finances, with targeted assistance for households unable to afford essential service.
Track: people gaining sustained access, service reliability, and household energy affordability.
- Make sustained clean-cooking access a funded priority.
Actors: energy and health ministries, development banks, local governments, and cooking-equipment and fuel suppliers.
Finance suitable equipment together with safe fuel distribution, reliable electricity where needed, maintenance, and consumer support. Address continuing affordability and supply-chain needs, including targeted assistance for low-income households. Select solutions using health performance, local availability, cost, and user preferences, and verify continued use after distribution.
Track: households consistently using clean cooking, recurring costs, and continued reliance on polluting alternatives.
- Strengthen efficiency standards and reduce peak demand.
Actors: national standards and enforcement agencies, building authorities, utilities, and manufacturers.
Strengthen and enforce minimum performance standards for cooling, appliances, and electric motors. Support efficient industrial motor systems and affordable equipment replacement. Incorporate passive cooling and efficient design into building codes and renovation programs. Offer demand-response arrangements that reward customers for shifting or reducing consumption when systems are under strain.
Track: standards compliance, verified energy savings, and peak-demand reductions.
- Reform fossil-fuel subsidies with protection in place before prices rise.
Actors: finance and social-protection ministries, energy regulators, and development partners.
Publish the costs and beneficiaries of explicit fossil-fuel subsidies and phase out broad support through a credible, communicated timetable. Establish accessible compensation and affordable alternatives before increases take effect. Protect essential clean-cooking access. Evaluate carbon pricing and pollution charges separately, with their own implementation and distributional assessments.
Track: subsidy expenditure, compensation reaching intended households, and changes in energy poverty.
- Make large electricity users contribute to reliable, affordable supply.
Actors: utility regulators, system operators, planning authorities, and data-center and industrial developers.
Require realistic demand forecasts, phased connection schedules, transparent allocation of attributable network costs, and financial commitments proportionate to project risk. Agree technically feasible load-flexibility and storage arrangements. Require credible low-carbon supply plans, reporting of backup-generation emissions and water use, and provisions protecting other consumers from stranded infrastructure costs.
Track: actual versus forecast demand, tested demand-response capability, emissions, and costs passed to other customers.
- Strengthen energy security and infrastructure resilience.
Actors: energy ministries, system operators, suppliers, emergency agencies, and cybersecurity authorities.
Assess exposure to fuel-route disruption, concentrated equipment and mineral supplies, extreme weather, and cyber threats. Prioritize maintenance, supplier diversification, suitable reserves, critical spare equipment, and recovery capability. Exercise emergency plans with neighboring systems and essential-service providers. Apply environmental and labor safeguards when developing alternative supply chains.
Track: restoration performance in exercises and actual incidents, major supply dependencies, and completion of priority risk-reduction measures.
- Turn emissions commitments into enforceable sector plans.
Actors: energy and environmental regulators, utilities, fuel producers, and industrial operators.
Set dated emissions-reduction milestones and coordinate replacement of high-emitting assets with reliable supply and worker support. Require methane leak detection, repair, and measurement-based reporting; restrict routine venting and flaring. Support industrial electrification and lower-emission fuels for suitable applications, assessing emissions across their supply chains.
Track: absolute emissions, verified methane reductions, and delivered reductions against sector milestones.
- Match innovation funding to technological maturity and public value.
Actors: research agencies, universities, development banks, industrial partners, and public procurement bodies.
Maintain distinct support for research, demonstration, and early commercial deployment, including improvements to established technologies. Use independent review, staged funding, and published performance milestones for storage, geothermal, nuclear, industrial heat, fuels, and grid technologies. Evaluate cost, reliability, emissions, scalability, and deployment time; share lessons and redirect funding when evidence fails to justify continuation.
Track: independently verified technical results, cost and schedule performance, and successful progression between development stages.
Updated September 10, 2026
Regional priorities differ with resources, incomes, institutions, and exposure to conflict and climate hazards. These overviews identify major conditions and choices; the developments to watch are suggested indicators of progress. Mexico is discussed under North America.
Asia and Oceania
Asia combines rapid growth in energy services with large investments in both fossil and low-carbon infrastructure. China is central to the outcome: its expansion of solar, wind, hydropower, and nuclear generation helped reduce coal-fired electricity output in 2025. Sustaining that reduction will depend on electricity demand, weather, grid integration, and the operation of its coal fleet. A single year’s decline cannot establish a durable emissions trajectory. Continued electrification of transport and industry also makes affordable electricity and efficient equipment increasingly important.
India illustrates the distinction between generating capacity and actual electricity supply. It reached 50% non-fossil installed capacity in June 2025, while non-fossil sources supplied 29.2% of generation during fiscal year 2025–26. Expanding clean supply therefore requires networks, storage, flexible consumption, and dependable operating capacity alongside new projects. Across South Asia, the priorities include reliable and affordable household service, industrial power, efficient cooling, and sustained access to clean cooking.
Japan’s Seventh Strategic Energy Plan emphasizes both renewables and nuclear power, with implementation dependent on investment, safety approvals, infrastructure, and public confidence. In Southeast Asia, the ASEAN Power Grid initiative could improve access to complementary resources across borders. Its progress depends on project preparation, financing, operating coordination, and workable trading rules. The appropriate balance between domestic supply and electricity imports will differ among countries.
Australia faces the coordinated replacement of ageing coal plants. For the National Electricity Market, AEMO’s 2026 plan identifies renewables, expanded networks, storage, and gas backup as the least-cost pathway under government policies. Timely delivery and community participation will shape the outcome. Many Pacific islands face a different task: reducing imported-fuel dependence while improving reliability and climate resilience. Solar, storage, and suitable local resources need financing that also covers maintenance, equipment replacement, and technical skills.
Developments to watch: fossil generation and emissions alongside renewable additions; grid and storage delivery; affordable cooling and clean cooking; cross-border electricity trade; and sustained fuel savings and reliability in island systems.
Middle East and North Africa
The region’s energy challenge combines its role in international oil and gas supply with rapidly growing domestic electricity needs. Cooling and desalination are major drivers of demand, making efficient buildings, appliances, and water systems essential. The 2026 disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated the international consequences of concentrated export routes. Diversification and infrastructure protection matter for producers and importing countries alike.
Gulf economies have opportunities to combine solar, storage, interconnected grids, and other low-carbon sources with their existing energy industries. The UAE’s Barakah nuclear plant supplies approximately one-quarter of national electricity needs. Proposed data-center and hydrogen projects could add substantial demand, but their significance should be assessed from credible construction schedules, actual electricity use, water requirements, and supply arrangements. Hydrogen export projects also need buyers willing to cover production and transport costs. Announced capacity alone does not establish commercial viability.
North Africa’s renewable resources create opportunities for domestic industry and electricity trade with Europe. The Tunisia–Italy ELMED interconnection project illustrates this potential. Export proposals nevertheless face financing and policy risks: the UK government ended its consideration of support for the Xlinks Morocco–UK project in June 2025. Project assessments should examine domestic energy needs, transmission capacity, land and water use, and the distribution of economic benefits.
Conditions differ sharply in countries affected by conflict and institutional breakdown. In Syria, restoring damaged electricity infrastructure and reliable service is a central recovery priority. Such needs require different financing and implementation arrangements from large Gulf investment programs. Across the region, subsidy reform should protect households unable to afford essential services, while oil and gas operations need measured methane reductions and effective environmental management.
Developments to watch: cooling demand and efficiency; reliable service restoration; renewable projects and interconnections entering operation; commercially committed hydrogen demand; methane emissions; and household affordability.
Sub-Saharan Africa
The central challenge is expanding dependable energy services fast enough to support development. More than 560 million people lacked electricity in 2024, and many connected households and businesses also need more reliable, affordable supply. National plans must match grid expansion, mini-grids, and stand-alone systems to settlement patterns and demand. Connections should support healthcare, education, agricultural processing, refrigeration, and other productive uses, with financing for household wiring and equipment where needed.
Mission 300 aims to connect 300 million people across Africa by 2030. In June 2026, the World Bank Group and African Development Bank reported that supported programs had connected more than 50 million people. The next test is whether expansion delivers sustained service. Utility payment performance, maintenance, financing costs, and household affordability require attention alongside construction. Tariff reform, loss reduction, and targeted assistance should be designed together; conditions differ too much to treat all African utilities as financially equivalent.
National electricity systems also require different solutions. Kenya’s geothermal development demonstrates the contribution of dependable renewable generation where suitable resources exist. Hydropower can support regional trade, but exposure to changing rainfall and drought varies across river basins. South Africa must sustain improved plant performance while expanding cleaner supply and networks. Eskom reported financial-year-to-date energy availability of 67.79% in early September 2026; the improvement is substantial, but continued maintenance and replacement investment remain necessary.
Clean cooking needs its own delivery programs. Equipment, continuing fuel or electricity costs, distribution, and user preferences determine sustained adoption. Solutions should be assessed for health performance and practical suitability, including reliable supply after initial subsidies end. Large mining, industrial, and export-energy investments should also be assessed for their contribution to domestic services, employment, public revenue, and environmental protection. Resource wealth creates opportunities; institutions and infrastructure determine how widely the benefits reach.
Developments to watch: sustained electricity and clean-cooking access; outage duration; household costs; utility finances; regional trade; drought preparedness; and productive uses of new energy services.
Europe
Europe’s priorities combine decarbonization, energy security, industrial competitiveness, and household affordability. Within the European Union, renewables supplied 47.2% of electricity and nuclear 23.2% in 2025, according to preliminary Eurostat data. These electricity shares should not be confused with the energy mix of transport, buildings, and industry. National resources and policies differ, and EU totals do not describe the whole European region.
The EU’s 2040 climate target, adopted in March 2026, establishes a 90% reduction in net emissions relative to 1990, comprising an 85% domestic reduction and up to five percentage points from international carbon credits. Delivery requires investment decisions across electricity, heating, transport, and industrial processes. The Commission’s affordable-energy measures and electrification agenda address the associated cost and infrastructure barriers. Households and firms need affordable equipment, credible savings, and timely grid connections to make those changes.
Reliability requires attention to system operation as generation changes. The expert investigation of the April 2025 blackout in Spain and Portugal identified interacting failures involving voltage control, oscillations, generator disconnections, and coordination. Its implications include improved operating practices, monitoring, and technical requirements. Storage, demand flexibility, interconnection, and dependable generation must be planned with the services needed to keep networks stable. Nuclear investment and continued operation also depend on safety, financing, construction performance, and waste management.
Security conditions remain uneven. The EU’s phasing out of Russian energy imports changes supply arrangements, while exposure to international fuel markets persists. Ukraine faces the immediate task of restoring and protecting energy services; its recovery agenda includes a more decentralized and resilient system. Across Europe, electricity-market integration and infrastructure cooperation need to accommodate different national starting points, while managing the costs borne by consumers and communities affected by industrial change.
Developments to watch: delivered emissions reductions; household bills and industrial energy costs; grid connections and flexibility; implementation of blackout recommendations; fuel-supply exposure; and recovery of reliable energy services in Ukraine.
Latin America and the Caribbean
The region combines substantial renewable electricity resources with continued fossil-fuel use in transport and industry. Hydropower, wind, solar, bioenergy, and geothermal resources provide different opportunities across countries. A relatively clean electricity system creates opportunities for industrial electrification and electric transport, but drought exposure, network limitations, financing, and consumer affordability affect delivery. Biofuels can contribute where their costs, land use, and emissions across production and supply are favorable.
Brazil illustrates the need to coordinate generation with the wider electricity system. Its wind and solar curtailment reflects supply–demand imbalances as well as transmission and operating constraints. The appropriate response includes better project location, network investment, storage, flexible demand, and market rules that reward useful system services. New industrial or data-center demand could absorb some surplus production, but continuous loads still need reliable supply when renewable output falls. Water availability and the allocation of infrastructure costs also require assessment.
Minerals offer another development opportunity. Latin America is a major supplier of energy-transition minerals, with scope to expand processing and related industries. Copper and lithium development should be evaluated alongside electricity and water requirements, community participation, environmental performance, and exposure to commodity cycles. Additional processing creates value only where infrastructure, skills, financing, and market conditions support it. For oil- and gas-producing countries, including Brazil, Guyana, and Argentina, long-lived investments likewise require realistic demand assumptions, transparent revenue management, and effective safeguards.
Regional resource abundance does not ensure universal service. In Haiti, solar and battery systems are helping improve electricity supply to hospitals, illustrating the importance of reliable energy for essential services. Many Caribbean islands face expensive imported fuels, small electricity markets, and severe storm risks. A World Bank facility for Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines combines renewable investment with stronger networks, batteries, and financing support. Regional procurement and project preparation can help overcome the limitations of small individual markets.
Developments to watch: curtailment and system flexibility; drought resilience; transport and industrial electrification; local benefits from resource development; reliable access in underserved communities; and island electricity costs and storm recovery.
North America
North America combines large energy resources with growing demands on electricity infrastructure and divergent national policies. In the United States, wind and solar, including small-scale solar, supplied about 19% of electricity generation in 2025. Gas and nuclear remain major sources. Data centers, manufacturing, and electrification require coordinated investment in generation and networks. At the end of 2025, approximately 8,200 proposed projects were seeking transmission-grid connections. Their capacity is not assured future supply: many will withdraw, and viable projects still need financing, equipment, and construction.
U.S. federal support changed substantially under the July 2025 tax law, which accelerated the termination of clean-vehicle, residential clean-energy, and efficiency incentives. The deployment outlook therefore requires technology-specific assessment of costs, remaining incentives, state policies, and customer demand. Regulators also need realistic forecasts from large electricity users and clear allocation of network costs, particularly where proposed data-center demand could expose other consumers to expensive underused infrastructure.
Canada has a large low-carbon electricity base, led by hydropower and nuclear, with substantial provincial differences. Its priorities include replacing higher-emitting generation, strengthening connections, and meeting new demand. At Darlington, construction of the first small modular reactor has advanced into reactor-building foundation work. Completion costs, schedules, licensing, and operating performance will determine its wider significance. Canada and the United States also remain important fossil-fuel suppliers; expanding LNG exports links investment decisions to overseas demand, methane emissions, and future market conditions.
Mexico’s 2024–25 reforms strengthened the role of state energy companies and changed the framework for private electricity investment. The practical test is whether public and private projects can deliver reliable, affordable supply alongside transmission expansion and industrial development. Across all three countries, efficient buildings and equipment can moderate demand growth, while infrastructure planning should account for extreme weather, water needs, environmental effects, and meaningful participation by affected communities, including Indigenous peoples.
Developments to watch: projects reaching operation; actual large-user demand and consumer cost exposure; effects of policy changes on deployment; nuclear construction performance; methane reduct
Updated September 10, 2026
Regional priorities differ with resources, incomes, institutions, and exposure to conflict and climate hazards. These overviews identify major conditions and choices; the developments to watch are suggested indicators of progress. Mexico is discussed under North America.
Asia and Oceania
Asia combines rapid growth in energy services with large investments in both fossil and low-carbon infrastructure. China is central to the outcome: its expansion of solar, wind, hydropower, and nuclear generation helped reduce coal-fired electricity output in 2025. Sustaining that reduction will depend on electricity demand, weather, grid integration, and the operation of its coal fleet. A single year’s decline cannot establish a durable emissions trajectory. Continued electrification of transport and industry also makes affordable electricity and efficient equipment increasingly important.
India illustrates the distinction between generating capacity and actual electricity supply. It reached 50% non-fossil installed capacity in June 2025, while non-fossil sources supplied 29.2% of generation during fiscal year 2025–26. Expanding clean supply therefore requires networks, storage, flexible consumption, and dependable operating capacity alongside new projects. Across South Asia, the priorities include reliable and affordable household service, industrial power, efficient cooling, and sustained access to clean cooking.
Japan’s Seventh Strategic Energy Plan emphasizes both renewables and nuclear power, with implementation dependent on investment, safety approvals, infrastructure, and public confidence. In Southeast Asia, the ASEAN Power Grid initiative could improve access to complementary resources across borders. Its progress depends on project preparation, financing, operating coordination, and workable trading rules. The appropriate balance between domestic supply and electricity imports will differ among countries.
Australia faces the coordinated replacement of ageing coal plants. For the National Electricity Market, AEMO’s 2026 plan identifies renewables, expanded networks, storage, and gas backup as the least-cost pathway under government policies. Timely delivery and community participation will shape the outcome. Many Pacific islands face a different task: reducing imported-fuel dependence while improving reliability and climate resilience. Solar, storage, and suitable local resources need financing that also covers maintenance, equipment replacement, and technical skills.
Developments to watch: fossil generation and emissions alongside renewable additions; grid and storage delivery; affordable cooling and clean cooking; cross-border electricity trade; and sustained fuel savings and reliability in island systems.
Middle East and North Africa
The region’s energy challenge combines its role in international oil and gas supply with rapidly growing domestic electricity needs. Cooling and desalination are major drivers of demand, making efficient buildings, appliances, and water systems essential. The 2026 disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated the international consequences of concentrated export routes. Diversification and infrastructure protection matter for producers and importing countries alike.
Gulf economies have opportunities to combine solar, storage, interconnected grids, and other low-carbon sources with their existing energy industries. The UAE’s Barakah nuclear plant supplies approximately one-quarter of national electricity needs. Proposed data-center and hydrogen projects could add substantial demand, but their significance should be assessed from credible construction schedules, actual electricity use, water requirements, and supply arrangements. Hydrogen export projects also need buyers willing to cover production and transport costs. Announced capacity alone does not establish commercial viability.
North Africa’s renewable resources create opportunities for domestic industry and electricity trade with Europe. The Tunisia–Italy ELMED interconnection project illustrates this potential. Export proposals nevertheless face financing and policy risks: the UK government ended its consideration of support for the Xlinks Morocco–UK project in June 2025. Project assessments should examine domestic energy needs, transmission capacity, land and water use, and the distribution of economic benefits.
Conditions differ sharply in countries affected by conflict and institutional breakdown. In Syria, restoring damaged electricity infrastructure and reliable service is a central recovery priority. Such needs require different financing and implementation arrangements from large Gulf investment programs. Across the region, subsidy reform should protect households unable to afford essential services, while oil and gas operations need measured methane reductions and effective environmental management.
Developments to watch: cooling demand and efficiency; reliable service restoration; renewable projects and interconnections entering operation; commercially committed hydrogen demand; methane emissions; and household affordability.
Sub-Saharan Africa
The central challenge is expanding dependable energy services fast enough to support development. More than 560 million people lacked electricity in 2024, and many connected households and businesses also need more reliable, affordable supply. National plans must match grid expansion, mini-grids, and stand-alone systems to settlement patterns and demand. Connections should support healthcare, education, agricultural processing, refrigeration, and other productive uses, with financing for household wiring and equipment where needed.
Mission 300 aims to connect 300 million people across Africa by 2030. In June 2026, the World Bank Group and African Development Bank reported that supported programs had connected more than 50 million people. The next test is whether expansion delivers sustained service. Utility payment performance, maintenance, financing costs, and household affordability require attention alongside construction. Tariff reform, loss reduction, and targeted assistance should be designed together; conditions differ too much to treat all African utilities as financially equivalent.
National electricity systems also require different solutions. Kenya’s geothermal development demonstrates the contribution of dependable renewable generation where suitable resources exist. Hydropower can support regional trade, but exposure to changing rainfall and drought varies across river basins. South Africa must sustain improved plant performance while expanding cleaner supply and networks. Eskom reported financial-year-to-date energy availability of 67.79% in early September 2026; the improvement is substantial, but continued maintenance and replacement investment remain necessary.
Clean cooking needs its own delivery programs. Equipment, continuing fuel or electricity costs, distribution, and user preferences determine sustained adoption. Solutions should be assessed for health performance and practical suitability, including reliable supply after initial subsidies end. Large mining, industrial, and export-energy investments should also be assessed for their contribution to domestic services, employment, public revenue, and environmental protection. Resource wealth creates opportunities; institutions and infrastructure determine how widely the benefits reach.
Developments to watch: sustained electricity and clean-cooking access; outage duration; household costs; utility finances; regional trade; drought preparedness; and productive uses of new energy services.
Europe
Europe’s priorities combine decarbonization, energy security, industrial competitiveness, and household affordability. Within the European Union, renewables supplied 47.2% of electricity and nuclear 23.2% in 2025, according to preliminary Eurostat data. These electricity shares should not be confused with the energy mix of transport, buildings, and industry. National resources and policies differ, and EU totals do not describe the whole European region.
The EU’s 2040 climate target, adopted in March 2026, establishes a 90% reduction in net emissions relative to 1990, comprising an 85% domestic reduction and up to five percentage points from international carbon credits. Delivery requires investment decisions across electricity, heating, transport, and industrial processes. The Commission’s affordable-energy measures and electrification agenda address the associated cost and infrastructure barriers. Households and firms need affordable equipment, credible savings, and timely grid connections to make those changes.
Reliability requires attention to system operation as generation changes. The expert investigation of the April 2025 blackout in Spain and Portugal identified interacting failures involving voltage control, oscillations, generator disconnections, and coordination. Its implications include improved operating practices, monitoring, and technical requirements. Storage, demand flexibility, interconnection, and dependable generation must be planned with the services needed to keep networks stable. Nuclear investment and continued operation also depend on safety, financing, construction performance, and waste management.
Security conditions remain uneven. The EU’s phasing out of Russian energy imports changes supply arrangements, while exposure to international fuel markets persists. Ukraine faces the immediate task of restoring and protecting energy services; its recovery agenda includes a more decentralized and resilient system. Across Europe, electricity-market integration and infrastructure cooperation need to accommodate different national starting points, while managing the costs borne by consumers and communities affected by industrial change.
Developments to watch: delivered emissions reductions; household bills and industrial energy costs; grid connections and flexibility; implementation of blackout recommendations; fuel-supply exposure; and recovery of reliable energy services in Ukraine.
Latin America and the Caribbean
The region combines substantial renewable electricity resources with continued fossil-fuel use in transport and industry. Hydropower, wind, solar, bioenergy, and geothermal resources provide different opportunities across countries. A relatively clean electricity system creates opportunities for industrial electrification and electric transport, but drought exposure, network limitations, financing, and consumer affordability affect delivery. Biofuels can contribute where their costs, land use, and emissions across production and supply are favorable.
Brazil illustrates the need to coordinate generation with the wider electricity system. Its wind and solar curtailment reflects supply–demand imbalances as well as transmission and operating constraints. The appropriate response includes better project location, network investment, storage, flexible demand, and market rules that reward useful system services. New industrial or data-center demand could absorb some surplus production, but continuous loads still need reliable supply when renewable output falls. Water availability and the allocation of infrastructure costs also require assessment.
Minerals offer another development opportunity. Latin America is a major supplier of energy-transition minerals, with scope to expand processing and related industries. Copper and lithium development should be evaluated alongside electricity and water requirements, community participation, environmental performance, and exposure to commodity cycles. Additional processing creates value only where infrastructure, skills, financing, and market conditions support it. For oil- and gas-producing countries, including Brazil, Guyana, and Argentina, long-lived investments likewise require realistic demand assumptions, transparent revenue management, and effective safeguards.
Regional resource abundance does not ensure universal service. In Haiti, solar and battery systems are helping improve electricity supply to hospitals, illustrating the importance of reliable energy for essential services. Many Caribbean islands face expensive imported fuels, small electricity markets, and severe storm risks. A World Bank facility for Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines combines renewable investment with stronger networks, batteries, and financing support. Regional procurement and project preparation can help overcome the limitations of small individual markets.
Developments to watch: curtailment and system flexibility; drought resilience; transport and industrial electrification; local benefits from resource development; reliable access in underserved communities; and island electricity costs and storm recovery.
North America
North America combines large energy resources with growing demands on electricity infrastructure and divergent national policies. In the United States, wind and solar, including small-scale solar, supplied about 19% of electricity generation in 2025. Gas and nuclear remain major sources. Data centers, manufacturing, and electrification require coordinated investment in generation and networks. At the end of 2025, approximately 8,200 proposed projects were seeking transmission-grid connections. Their capacity is not assured future supply: many will withdraw, and viable projects still need financing, equipment, and construction.
U.S. federal support changed substantially under the July 2025 tax law, which accelerated the termination of clean-vehicle, residential clean-energy, and efficiency incentives. The deployment outlook therefore requires technology-specific assessment of costs, remaining incentives, state policies, and customer demand. Regulators also need realistic forecasts from large electricity users and clear allocation of network costs, particularly where proposed data-center demand could expose other consumers to expensive underused infrastructure.
Canada has a large low-carbon electricity base, led by hydropower and nuclear, with substantial provincial differences. Its priorities include replacing higher-emitting generation, strengthening connections, and meeting new demand. At Darlington, construction of the first small modular reactor has advanced into reactor-building foundation work. Completion costs, schedules, licensing, and operating performance will determine its wider significance. Canada and the United States also remain important fossil-fuel suppliers; expanding LNG exports links investment decisions to overseas demand, methane emissions, and future market conditions.
Mexico’s 2024–25 reforms strengthened the role of state energy companies and changed the framework for private electricity investment. The practical test is whether public and private projects can deliver reliable, affordable supply alongside transmission expansion and industrial development. Across all three countries, efficient buildings and equipment can moderate demand growth, while infrastructure planning should account for extreme weather, water needs, environmental effects, and meaningful participation by affected communities, including Indigenous peoples.
Developments to watch: projects reaching operation; actual large-user demand and consumer cost exposure; effects of policy changes on deployment; nuclear construction performance; methane reduct