Energy Executive Agenda 2025: New Challenges, New Innovations

Bain’s annual survey of more than 700 executives across oil and gas, utilities, chemicals, mining, and agribusiness reveals a striking shift in sentiment and a disconnect: Despite record-breaking global investments in clean energy last year, the leaders of the companies tasked with delivering on the transition have become less optimistic about when the world will achieve net-zero carbon emissions.

Taken in the weeks following COP29, our 2025 survey once again aims to get a better sense of industry leaders’ views on the energy transition’s challenges and opportunities, and to understand how they’re balancing those investments with other business priorities.

The most notable data points include:

• Approximately 31% of companies saw capital project costs increase by double-digit percentages over the past 12 months.
• Around 62% of executives expect to transform their company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system within three years.
• Oil and gas executives we surveyed project the world will reach peak oil demand by 2038, whereas some groups such as the International Energy Agency forecast it by 2030.
• About 44% of respondents expect net-zero emissions by 2070 or later, while only 32% expect it by 2050—a reversal from previous surveys, when almost 40% to 50% foresaw 2050 and fewer than a third expected 2070.

The results make clear that what has been described as an energy transition is better understood as a dual challenge of delivering ever-increasing volumes of energy—driven by growing prosperity in lower-income countries and accelerating demand in the developed world—while simultaneously pushing to decarbonize.

The survey and our work with industry leaders worldwide also signal that despite the challenges in accelerating decarbonization, this is a time of innovation and transformation. The survey went deeper on select topics that are top of mind for executives, including capital projects, where fast-rising costs are pushing companies to rethink their approach, and the most urgent digital technology investments.

A key takeaway is that energy and natural resources (ENR) executives’ agendas are fuller than ever. How effectively they enact their priorities while managing a barrage of challenges will determine who leads the industry’s next era. Here are the themes from this year’s survey that rose to the top.

1. Net zero looks much farther away.

For the foreseeable future, humanity has signaled demand both for the rapid development of low-carbon resources but also for the continued production of legacy energy sources.

The net effect is that the timeline for achieving net zero continues to slip later, even with significant and sustained investment.

2. Why the pessimism? Companies are caught in a non-virtuous cycle of ROI.

The era of enthusiasm for environmental, social, and corporate governance–driven investment is giving way to a harder-nosed focus on ROI.

The result? Tighter budgets, constrained balance sheets, and rapidly rising capital costs are forcing companies to make tough calls about where to place their bets.

3. As costs rise, executives are rethinking capital projects.

ENR companies are undertaking an increasing number of capital projects in the coming years to meet the energy transition’s dual challenge. To achieve what’s required, some companies intend to double or triple capital deployment within just a few years.

In short, capital project costs are ballooning at the worst possible time for executives.

This cost escalation is exacerbating an already challenging ROI environment, leading to project delays and reevaluation. The industry has reached a turning point: Many executives are realizing they must rethink their approach to capital projects to achieve greater efficiency and speed.

4. The outlook for transition-oriented growth businesses has weakened, but there are pockets of optimism.

As optimism about the net-zero timeline has slipped, so, too, has executives’ confidence in the contributions that their new transition-oriented growth businesses will make toward company profits and valuation by 2030.

However, executives feel increasingly positive about the business cases for select emerging technologies.

5. Utilities are cautiously confident that they can meet the substantial load demand increase coming largely from data centers.

One of the biggest issues that utilities executives face right now is the AI boom and subsequent explosion of electricity demand from data centers. Their demand could double by 2027, consuming 2.6% of global energy power, according to Bain analysis.

Meeting data centers’ demand could cost more than $2 trillion in new energy generation resources, Bain estimates.

Utilities executives aren’t panicking, but they’re clear-eyed about the challenge.

6. Leaders are investing in digital technologies to enable business transformation.

While companies may have been able to put off major technology investments without significant consequences in recent years, executives are starting to recognize that those days are over. Most are planning technology-enabled improvements across multiple key functions, and one of the first items on the agenda is overhauling their ERP systems. In addition, executives are feeling more bullish about the business prospects of AI and digital technologies, including generative AI.

The ERP transformation is more than just another IT upgrade; it’s an imperative and a potential source of competitive advantage. Software vendors are phasing out support for some legacy ERP systems, and companies are finding that a refresh can be a powerful enabler of business capabilities (e.g., field service management) and technology tools (e.g., AI-supported demand forecasting).

Rising to the challenge

In a complex landscape, we see examples of leaders stepping up to meet the moment. They’re finding ways to balance legacy energy investments with the need to scale up low-carbon energy solutions. They’re tackling ERP transformations and other digital technology investments not as IT exercises or optional upgrades but as strategic imperatives that unlock new ways of working and sharpen their competitive edge. Some are achieving capital project schedule and cost improvements of 15% to 50% while maintaining quality and safety.

And through five years of relentless change since this survey began, industry leaders remain committed to innovation and delivering the essential resources that power global progress and prosperity.

The authors wish to thank Nick Baker for his contributions to this analysis.