Energy Industry Update Archive

As the energy industry moves further into 2026, a convergence of policy uncertainty, accelerating load growth, and increasing affordability pressures is reshaping the development of U.S. energy infrastructure.

ScottMadden’s Fall 2025 Power Brief examines how a new U.S. presidential administration is reshaping energy policy, from proposed reversals of power plant emissions standards to shifts in tariffs and tax credits affecting renewable development. The brief also highlights rising capacity pressures, growing natural gas market activity, and emerging challenges tied to large-load interconnection as data centers expand. It concludes with lessons from the April 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout and implications for North American grid reliability.

This Energy Industry Update, themed “Complicated,” examines three defining themes, among others: the rising energy demands of and energy industry potential for AI, the rapid expansion of large electrical loads and the rate implications for utilities and customers, and the critical role of flexible resources (including storage) in ensuring grid reliability amid growing renewable deployment and electrification. As decision-makers confront these challenges, actionable insights are essential.

ScottMadden’s Spring 2025 inaugural Power Brief explores how a new U.S. presidential administration is shaping energy policy amid rising demand, grid modernization, and cost pressures. Key topics include data center-driven growth, new nuclear development, and ongoing reliability and affordability challenges.

ScottMadden’s fall 2024 edition of the Energy Industry Update, is themed “The Distance.” The report dives into the pressing issues of renewable resources, extreme weather, and energy demand.

ScottMadden’s spring 2024 edition of the Energy Industry Update, is themed “The Distance,” which reflects time and effort (i) to get new non-emitting energy technologies to commercialization (long-duration storage, next-generation geothermal), (ii) to improve regional transmission planning and get transmission projects under way (FERC orders), (iii) to reconfigure (if feasible) power generation or to preserve resources as long as possible for reliability (EPA greenhouse gas regulations), and (iv) to implement effective programs for affordability (low-income energy affordability).

This Energy Industry Update examines recent trends in the utility and energy industry, where stakeholders are waiting for new technologies to emerge to support energy transition and virtual power plants, or for the results of various regulatory initiatives relating to power plants, the grid, and gas-power coordination to be seen. In all of these cases, the “waiting” is indeed the hardest part for energy infrastructure development.

This Energy Industry Update (EIU) examines the state of the utility and energy industry broadly and those areas where we “just can’t get enough” or would certainly like more—such as adequate energy resources to serve load during each hour of the year, or coordination of processes, approaches, and assumptions for planning, or enough financial returns in a rising cost environment.

This Energy Industry Update (EIU) examines the infrastructure investment needed to enable the clean energy transition and the way money is flowing through the system to pay for it.