Energy will once again be at the forefront politically and economically in 2026. At the same time, issues relating to price, capacity, and new tech scale-up mean the industry remains mired in uncertainty.
Will LNG continue its growth, driven by the huge build-out of new capacity in the US, or will solar, green molecules and other renewable technologies be the main story?
Then there is the continued spectre of geopolitical tensions, underlined by the recent US capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro. Each new year also brings fresh hope that the Ukraine war will end, though a resolution won’t come easily.
Speaking on the Energy Gang podcast, Amy Myers Jaffe, Director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University’s School of Professional Studies and expert on global energy policy, sustainability, and geopolitical risk, said, “If we can hope that we see an end to the Ukraine war in 2026, that would unleash more investment potentially in Russian gas – and that would make the oversupply situation with natural gas ten times worse.
“If LNG becomes inexpensive, does that slow down China’s electro-state strategy? It could be a very interesting competitive market, for different fuels and technologies, if we get both this surge from the US and the peace agreement in Europe. Technologies will need to compete price by price by price.”
Ed Crooks, Vice Chair Americas at analyst group Wood Mackenzie said its research forecasts US LNG exports will roughly double by 2030, and triple from 2023 levels by 2035.
“There’s a real question about who’s going to buy all of that extra gas. There’s clearly going to be downward pressure on international gas prices in the years to come, and it’s a big question over how low prices will go,” he said.
“Will it start to cause financial strain [and] will we see some of those LNG exporters get into real difficulties? That’s a big story to watch. It may not fully play out this year, it indeed may not be until 2027 to 2029, but that’s a really important trend to keep an eye on.”
Melissa Lott, Professor at Columbia University’s Climate School, said a key dynamic would be the demo-to-commercialisation track and investments in the supply chain.
Jaffe cited humanoid robots as a technology to watch this year. Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind recently formed an AI partnership which aims to enable humanoids complete a wide variety of industrial tasks. Other major firms are active, too. “Hyundai says it’s going to train them to do simple processes along the assembly line – repetitive tasks seem to be what they’re good at,” she said.