BY NEIL EISBERG | EDITOR
Energy – its availability but most importantly, its cost – remains a critical concern for the chemical industry, particularly in Europe. Industry leaders and trade bodies have been increasingly vocal about the impact of high energy costs (C&I, 2025, 89, (12), 8) which are tilting the playing field in favour of imports over local production.
And right now, the energy industry itself is undergoing huge amounts of change.
A quick look at some statistics shows the clear direction of travel: in the third quarter of 2025, 49.3% of net electricity generated in the EU came from renewable sources, compared with the 47.5% in the same period in 2024.
According to Eurostat figures, Denmark, with 95.9%, had the highest share of renewables, followed by Austria (93.3%) and Estonia (85.6%). The lowest shares of renewables were recorded in Malta (16.6%), Czechia (19.7%) and Slovakia (21.1%). In 21 EU countries, the share of renewable energy increased in Q3 2025. The largest year-on-year increases were recorded in Estonia (+20.6 percentage points (pp)), Latvia (+18.9 pp) and Austria (+16.3 pp).
Most renewable electricity came from solar (38.3%), wind (30.7%) and hydro (23.3%), followed by combustible renewable fuels (7.2%) and geothermal energy (0.5%).
Meanwhile, energy services provider, GridBeyond’s recent report Global Energy Trends 2026, Caught in the Crosswinds, highlights how the energy usage has been reshaped by the rapidly arriving infrastructure of a digital, electrified future. Data centre growth to support AI, electric vehicles, heat pumps and smart devices has collectively fuelled a surge in electricity consumption.
Electricity demand from data centres worldwide is set to more than double by 2030 to around 945TWh. AI will be the most significant driver of this increase, with data centre demand projected to more than quadruple by 2030. The impact is already felt in grids, resulting in delayed connections, and a fundamental rethinking of the flexibility and capacity planning required.
IEA’s World Energy Employment 2025 report finds that global energy sector employment reached 76m worldwide in 2024, up more than 5m from 2019. The sector has contributed 2.4% of all net jobs created across the global economy over the past five years.
The power sector is leading the way on job creation, accounting for three-quarters of recent employment growth, and is now the largest employer in energy. Solar PV is a key growth driver, complemented by rapid expansions in hiring in nuclear power, grids and storage. Increasing electrification of other sectors of the economy, like growing uptake of EVs and batteries is also reshaping employment trends.
Still – not everything is changing that fast. Fossil fuel employment remained resilient in 2024. Coal jobs rebounded in India, China and Indonesia, pushing employment in the coal industry 8% above its 2019 levels. The oil and gas industry has also regained most of the jobs lost in 2020, although low prices and economic uncertainties have triggered job cuts in 2025.
The IEA warns of deepening skilled labour shortages. More than half of the survey respondents reported critical hiring bottlenecks. An ageing workforce is intensifying the pressure, with 2.4 energy workers in advanced economies nearing retirement for every new entrant under 25. Nuclear- and grid-related professions face some of the steepest demographic challenges, with retirements outnumbering new entrants by ratios of 1.7 and 1.4 to 1, respectively.
So, what does all this mean?
The shift to more renewable energy is of course a good thing; it reduces the need to extract and burn fossil fuels, it’s essential to limiting climate change and over time it’s a shift that will make many countries more resilient as they no longer rely on importing energy from abroad.
The transition underway also means the energy industry is desperate for innovation, whether that’s in the form of smarter grids (see C&I 2025, 89, (11), 22), small modular nuclear reactors (see the feature starting on page 22 of this issue), or advances in carbon capture, new battery technologies or better materials.
Chemistry has a huge role – and a huge opportunity – here to deliver the breakthroughs needed to generate and store energy for everyone.
But it’s also worth remembering chemistry is an energy-intensive business. Finding a way to deliver lower energy prices will be key not only to the chemistry industry itself becoming more sustainable in terms of the products it creates, but also sustaining the chemistry industry (particularly in Europe) in a period of tough international competition (see opposite for more on this).
Chemistry is vital to the energy transition, but right now it also needs help with energy costs, too, or that innovation may be lost.
The start of the year is always a good opportunity to take stock, and on page 18 we take a deep dive into the trends for the industry worldwide in 2026, with a look at the challenges – and the opportunities – the year may bring.
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