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ScottMadden Releases Summer 2026 Energy Industry Update, Examining How Utilities Are Meeting the “Speed-to-Power” Challenge

ScottMadden, Inc., a leading management consulting firm serving the energy industry, today released its Summer 2026 Energy Industry Update (EIU), examining the forces reshaping the utility industry as companies work to meet rapidly growing electricity demand while maintaining reliability and affordability.

Centered on the theme “Takin’ Care of Business,” the Summer 2026 edition explores how utilities are responding to unprecedented growth driven by data centers, advanced manufacturing, electrification, and evolving public policy. The report examines the investments, technologies, and operational strategies utilities are employing to close the industry’s growing “speed-to-power” gap.

As electricity demand continues to grow at a pace not seen in decades, utilities face the challenge of expanding infrastructure while balancing affordability, reliability, and long-term resilience. This edition examines the trends, opportunities, and decisions shaping the future of the energy industry. 

Report Highlights 

  • The industry’s defining trends, including rising capital investment, aging infrastructure, affordability pressures, and rapidly growing electricity demand. 
  • The “speed-to-power” challenge and the race to serve data centers, advanced manufacturing, and other large-load customers. 
  • Artificial intelligence and the grid, including power availability, reliability planning, facility design, and energy efficiency. 
  • Renewed momentum for nuclear power, including conventional plants, SMRs, advanced reactors, and microreactors. 
  • Electricity affordability and the role of infrastructure investment, regional markets, and regulation. 
  • Lessons from Portugal’s recent blackout and operating grids with high levels of inverter-based resources. 

Published annually, the ScottMadden Energy Industry Update provides practical analysis of emerging trends affecting the North American energy industry.

The Summer 2026 Energy Industry Update is available here.