By Mark Uffhausen and Mike Granowski

For decades, the utilities sector in the United States was the quiet backbone of the economy – reliable, regulated, and gradualist. Today, it stands at the dawn of significant demand growth at levels not seen in a generation. The next decade will be a period of punctuated evolution. The winners in this era will deliberately evolve from reliable, durable, rigid, and gradual to resilient, adaptive, collaborative, and dynamic. Those unable to do so will languish.

The current moment

Since Thomas Edison founded the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878, the electric utility industry has grown exponentially and evolved through investment, innovation, and regulation into the great engine that drove the Industrial Revolution in the U.S. and the world. Sometime in the late 20th century, despite population and economic growth, electricity consumption in the U.S. slowed dramatically, driven by new, more efficient technologies and de-industrialization. For the past 3+ decades, the utility industry has quietly and methodically maintained the existing 20th-century grid, adopting new technology gradually. Historically, periods of stability do not last forever. A period of significant change lies ahead, and we, as an industry, will have a positive influence on the outcome; otherwise, it will pass us by.

In fact, electricity demand has already started growing a 2+% p.a. and is expected to continue doing so for years, if not decades, a significant contrast from recent history. A large portion of the growth in demand will require high-reliability supply, a challenge for a network with a large proportion of intermittent supply sources. The challenges will be more acute in areas of the country expected to see significant build of data centers and industrialization. Ironically, some of the areas at higher risk of shortfalls are those where it’s easier to add the capacity, as demand appears to be growing faster than supply is able to.

We stand on the precipice of a new industrial revolution, driven not by lighting, appliances or machines but rather information, computation, and artificial intelligence. While speculation about the pace and magnitude of growth in these “new” industries varies, one thing is clear: electricity will be the key to realizing that growth. The question is whether today’s utility, the facilitator/product of the last industrial revolution, can deliver.

Challenges for utilities

U.S. utilities will face several structural and cultural barriers that limit their ability to capture the revenue, efficiency, and risk-management benefits of this new era. Unlike in the original Golden Age, today’s utilities must manage an intense combination of technological advancement, regulatory pressure, grid fragility, cultural drag, and ongoing learning. Each system has its own context, but many of these issues likely apply to yours.

1) Regulatory pressure

The regulatory compact has shifted as affordability has come under scrutiny. Rising costs from infrastructure upgrades, renewable integration, resource adequacy, rider programs and emergency measures are passed directly to consumers. Rate increases have outpaced inflation, with 2025’s capital requirements expected to exceed USD 190 Bn. Unlike in the 1950s and 60s, utilities cannot rely on scale alone to preserve affordability. They need more creative solutions to shift demand and supply across time and geography to optimize assets and address the new trilemma – the regulatory balance between reliability, affordability, and decarbonization. With downward pressure on Return on Equity (ROEs), performance-based ratemaking, and rate caps, the current environment makes a ‘wait and see’ approach increasingly impractical.

2) Aging infrastructure and resilience requirements

Local grids have suffered from years of deferred investment, maintenance inefficiencies, weak data systems, and growing exposure to cyberattacks and extreme weather. Outage frequency and repair costs are rising, while modernization efforts are slowed by permitting delays, high capital requirements, and uneven federal support. The reliability standard of “1 day in 10 years” developed in the 1960s for centralized systems is no longer sufficient. Resilience – the ability to withstand, respond to, and recover from shocks, natural or artificial – is now the #1 strategic imperative for U.S. utilities. For example, catastrophic failures from Superstorm Sandy, Winter Storm Uri, Hurricane Maria, and Winter Storm Elliott illustrate the stakes. It is an enterprise-level risk in regions facing severe climate impacts and a universal concern for cyber threats, terrorism, and geopolitical conflicts.

3) Policy uncertainty

Volatile federal and local regulatory policy complicates investment, technology choice, and execution. Utilities long accustomed to policy stability and five-year planning horizons now face a paradox: states demand 20-year planning, while federal actions create turbulence in technology and resource selection. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) shook Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) and projects overnight. Efforts to harden and restructure supply chains have been roiled by the current Trump Administration's tariffs and interventions in firms such as Westinghouse, lithium producers, and others. The non-durability of federal industrial policy sustains uncertainty and clouds planning for generation resources and procurement through 2030 and beyond. IRPs and their supporting supply chains must be more resilient and adaptable under this cloud while scaling infrastructure to meet the coming demand growth.

4) Cultural stagnation

One of the toughest barriers is internal. Cultural stagnation – resistiveness, gradualism, and myopia – undermines utilities’ ability to capture revenue potential, unlock efficiencies, and manage risk in a growth environment. The “can-do” muscle memory of major build-out in the 1970s and 80s has faded. There are many examples. such as: utilities in blue and purple states are often surprised by legislation and respond with “no thanks” rather than more constructive win-win approaches. The current moment requires cultural willingness not only to deploy solutions but to test and learn under a productive regulatory framework.

5) Supply chain constraints

Utilities are being asked to deliver scale not seen since the 1970s, driven by load growth from data centers, reshoring, and electrification. From 2000–2020, U.S. electricity demand was effectively flat, growing at less than 0.5% annually on average. The US will likely experience 2–3% annual growth in demand through 2030, with certain regions experiencing even faster expansion. After renewables deployment suppressed gas additions to roughly 3-5 GW per year from 2012 to 2020, forward builds in the late 2020s point to 10–20 GW annually. As a result, turbine backlogs have stretched beyond seven years, and installed capital costs have climbed above USD 2,000/kW. The strain extends well beyond turbines to transformers, breakers, and high-voltage cables. These structural supply chain constraints have evolved from temporary frictions to threats to reliability and affordability as utilities seek to balance beneficial load growth with higher capital costs.

6) Workforce shortages and skills gaps

Tacit knowledge in the utility workforce is at risk of being lost due to demographic aging. Roughly 25% of employees are nearing retirement, especially in operations and maintenance. Training gaps and talent competition will continue to raise labor and knowledge-retention costs, threatening operating continuity. The potential need to 4-10x the wire infrastructure across utility territories is juxtaposed with a shrinking, knowledgeable workforce to execute. Without a sufficiently sized, skilled, and augmented workforce, utilities will struggle to build and operate critical new assets while managing existing ones. The affordability crisis and regulatory pressure are likely to worsen as a result.

Key success factors on the road ahead

We hypothesize that the utility industry can enter another Golden Age, achieving significant growth through innovation, investment, and renewed dedication to its core purpose: safety, reliability, affordability, and universal service. The winners will shift from merely maintaining legacy systems to becoming resilient and adaptable organizations that can manage rapid technological change, evolving customer expectations, an aging workforce and infrastructure, limited capital, and regulatory and market uncertainty. To overcome these obstacles, we believe there are six keys to success:

Not everyone will win. Those stuck in rigid planning, monolithic supply chains, siloed operations, backfoot regulatory approaches, and capital expenditure burdens, project delays, ratepayer revolt, and inevitable regulatory scrutiny will constrain Luddite cultures. In this series, we will expand on these five key success factors and present a vision of the Golden Age of the U.S. Utility. The lights are coming on. The question is: Will your utility lead and thrive in this new Golden Age, or be left in the dark?