Weaving a new and more realistically hopeful global energy narrative

Weaving a new and more realistically hopeful global energy narrative

Speaking at World Energy Week in Panama 

This time of the year is, for some, more than a celebration with friends and family: it is also a moment of reflection, regeneration, and resolution.

On reflection, it has been a very busy and productive year for our world energy community, as we continue to grow and strengthen our collective ability to successfully navigate these turbulent, emotional and often fractious times of energy transitions and additions.

Signals of regeneration include our growing network of world energy leadership organisations, better quality community-wide contributions and new commitments to collaborate, lead and learn with others, across increasingly diverse regions.

Our enduring resolution remains: to continue to find new and more effective ways to work together and enable more and better energy for billions of lives and a healthy planet.

We are all living through one of the most disruptive, misunderstood and transformational periods in the history of energy. It is not easy to maintain our independence and promote the voice of reason in a context of increasingly politicized and polarizing energy rhetoric. But it is what we do.

Our position remains clear: there is no universal energy story or system.

There are many energy systems and technology pathways – fuels, power systems, and storage solutions. The fundamental challenge is to avoid ideological prescriptions, engage with complexity, and better coordinate actions by leading together, and learning what is working – or not - across increasingly diverse regions and multiple energy transition and additions pathways.

A stance of humility can be illuminating; technology hype often hides fragilities.

As we try to work out how to move increasingly connected, modern energy societies towards new possibilities – dynamic resilience, circularity and flourishing – many and new ways of collaborating - at pace and with scale - are essential and emerging. Better energy futures are crafted bottom-up and horizontally out, transplanted not replicated, nor contained in top-down roadmaps.

As the world’s only independent, all interests, energy leadership platform and practical energy road building community, the World Energy Council keeps thousands of fingers on the global energy pulse. Together, we noted five signals of change in 2025:

1. New winds of change are blowing – East and West Renewable power grids and storage are scaling faster than ever - especially in China, India, the Gulf and Latin America. Some other countries are doubling-down fossil fuel securities.
2. Markets are operating at the edge of volatility Access to and cost of capital, trade friction, fragmented finance are keeping energy leaders awake at night.
3. Energy and AI – twin engines of prosperity and a concentration of power: From data centres to smart grids, the energy–AI nexus is exposing electrification gaps in every region. The power intensity of data centres is unprecedented. The confluence of power – physical, digital and economic – is keeping many leaders awake at night.
4. A ‘climate-plus-circularity’ agenda is emerging: Overshoot of 1.5 °C now looks unavoidable, at least temporarily. New sustainability thinking – circularity, adaptation, resilience - is emerging and essential to energy for billions of lives and a healthy planet.
5. Energy equity fell in every region: Widening gaps in affordability, widespread permitting and licensing delays, are clear signals that social engagement and trust are the real constraints in making progress.

We are living in a world increasingly more defined by disruption rather than stability; and progress pivots on actionable foresights, flexible policies, and sustained, innovative collaboration – not linear planning.

It is this spirit of futurity that infuses the 27th World Energy Congress in Riyadh in October 2026. This is our opportunity to convene power for common good – and it will be a pivotal moment in world energy leadership.

We are striving to apply our unique community-wide, analogue association advantages in a faster paced digital era. Our insights are enriched by collective intelligence - human wisdom and digital data.

And we embrace collaborative innovation and intergenerational leadership as the best ways to enable energy for billions of lives and a healthy planet.

As our founder, Daniel Nicol Dunlop, reminded the world a century ago, our shared purpose is not power itself, but the service of humanity through cooperation.

My sincere and heartfelt thanks to all our friends, colleagues, members, patrons, Officers, Chairs, Future Energy Leaders, Congress sponsors.

The future of energy starts with all of us.