Powering the Age of Electricity: system-wide strategies for modern utilities
Dr Steven Griffiths, Professor and Vice Chancellor for Research at the American University of Sharjah, discusses how utilities can address energy transition, security, and digitalisation through system-wide planning, diversified low-carbon portfolios, and advanced grid technologies.
What are the ways in which global utilities can address the challenges and opportunities surrounding energy transition, energy security, and digitalisation?
These three challenges, which are indeed also opportunities, are interconnected, and utilities must address them as a system rather than in silos. In order to deliver decarbonisation and reliability simultaneously, utilities need to diversify their low-carbon generation portfolios by pairing variable renewables with firm capacity from nuclear, including small modular reactors, geothermal (where accessible), and/or long-duration energy storage. Further, digitalisation needs to be viewed not only as an operational upgrade, but as a key enabler of the transition. Deploying AI-enabled grid management, distributed energy resource management systems, and virtual power plants can unlock significant flexibility from existing infrastructure without massive capital buildouts. Utilities should also not treat rising demand from data centres, EVs, and industrial electrification as a threat to the current grid, but rather as an opportunity to build the grid of the future, one that is cleaner, more distributed, and more resilient.
With energy security a dominant theme globally, how can utilities support an “orderly” energy transition that leaves no one behind?
An orderly transition requires managing the pace and sequencing of change so that reliability and affordability are maintained. The IEA is projecting an unprecedented 3,500 TWh increase in global electricity consumption through 2027, with demand rising at nearly 4% annually. Much of this growth comes from data centres and EV infrastructure that do not directly serve the broader communities bearing the cost of grid expansion. Utilities are now at the centre of what the IEA calls a new “Age of Electricity,” with electricity consumption set to increase rapidly as electrification reshapes buildings, transport, and industry. Therefore, balancing the benefits and potential burdens of such electricity demand growth must be carefully considered. Data centre operators, for instance, should bring new, dedicated clean generation capacity as a condition of development rather than competing with existing ratepayers for constrained supply. At the same time, solving renewable electricity intermittency remains a key energy security issue as the share of electricity from solar and wind within energy systems continues to grow rapidly. The Masdar round-the-clock project in Abu Dhabi combines 5.2 GW of solar PV with a 19-GWh battery system to deliver 1 GW of firm, uninterrupted power. This demonstrates that solar-plus-storage can function as a dispatchable baseload, pointing to the future of affordable, reliable, clean electricity that needs to be replicated and scaled globally.
What are the most viable pathways for utilities to integrate hydrogen into the existing energy infrastructure?
For utilities, perhaps the most relevant use of clean hydrogen is for long-duration energy storage. As grids deal with ever-larger shares of variable renewables, the need for multi-day and seasonal balancing begins to exceed what lithium-ion batteries can provide economically. Utilities can produce green hydrogen via electrolysis powered by very low-cost clean electricity from large-scale solar, wind, or nuclear and then store and reconvert it through hydrogen-capable turbines or fuel cells as needed. This makes the economics of green hydrogen production a direct utility concern, fundamentally tied to procuring the least expensive form of long-duration energy storage, which hydrogen may or may not provide depending on context.
Of course, the strongest case for hydrogen is as a feedstock in refining, ammonia, and methanol production. Utilities therefore play an important enabling role by structuring tariffs, interconnection, and power procurement arrangements that let electrolysers operate as flexible loads on low-cost clean power, helping underpin bankable clean hydrogen supply for these industrial offtakers.
What are your thoughts on the role of CCUS in helping decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors?
Carbon capture remains a key decarbonisation technology for industries like cement and chemicals, where process emissions cannot be eliminated through efficiency and electrification coupled with clean electricity. What has changed recently, however, is the growing need for carbon capture to mitigate emissions from the power sector.
The resurgence of gas-fired generation to meet AI-driven electricity demand means utilities are now building new natural gas capacity that needs to be capture-ready. We are already seeing models where gas turbines pair with carbon capture systems designed to remove 90% or more of CO₂ emissions. However, the challenge remains to build viable business models for carbon capture, particularly when CO₂ utilisation and/or geological storage are not readily available. Without credible carbon pricing, offtake agreements for captured CO₂ or regulatory mandates, capture technologies will not scale. The technology works, but the economics need deliberate policy support.
