Lessons on electrification from economies leading the way on the energy transition

The share of electricity in final energy consumption has been trending upwards significantly in pioneering economies, a trajectory that will be key for the global move towards clean energy. But what lessons can be learned for others?

Electric technologies are typically more efficient than their fossil fuel equivalents and one of their major benefits is enabling integration of renewables through the coupling of different energy sectors – making electrification a key lever in the global energy transition.

Indeed, electricity's share in final energy consumption is expected to rise from 21% in 2024 to around 30% by 2030 to align with net-zero pathways, with electricity quietly becoming a new measure of industrial power.

Yet while major economies are replacing fossil fuels such as oil and gas with electrons, progress is uneven. Some economies – notably China, Norway, Indonesia and the US state of Texas – are electrifying faster than others.

Here, we take a closer look at the data to reveal what is driving their lead, what challenges lie ahead and what it will take for others to catch up.

Share of electricity can’t be the only indicator of electrification as it reflects the increasing demand across different sectors due to industrial electrification, increased uptake of electric vehicles (EV), and artificial intelligence (AI) growth and cooling needs.

The change of electricity share, though, can indicate specific enablers that lead to the transformation. Drawing from multi-year statistics shared by International Energy Agency (IEA) and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), we have identified a few factors that stand out:

Drivers for electrification are more or less the same for the electrification pioneers – i.e., decarbonization, energy security and economic goals – with countries like China seeking to achieve its dual carbon goals of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 through renewable energy generation.

Even resource-rich nations such as Norway have historically used electrification strategically instead of domestic oil and gas consumption.

How different economies electrify varies significantly, adapted to their local contexts in terms of geography, energy mix, market, etc. Nevertheless, according to our analysis, three main enablers stand out:

Driven by growing electrification, electricity demand is expected to keep increasing and hit the bottleneck of existing grids. Electrification efforts on the demand side would be largely in vain without sufficient channels to transfer electricity from source to demand.

Grid readiness, that leverages a combination of its capacity, reliability and flexibility, is therefore the ultimate foundation for electrification. However, our analysis shows that this requires:

As highlighted above, pioneering economies have proven that the electrification journey is not a sprint but a marathon of sustained policy, benefit creation and technological innovation – with a reliable, flexible grid with sufficient capacity acting as the backbone of electrification.

The imperative is for latecomers to learn from and adapt such blueprints with localized context and leverage the proven strategies to accelerate their own energy transition journey. The age of electricity is here, and the time for a focused, determined push is now.

The authors would like to thank Yingjie Tan (Senior Research Engineer, Electric Power Research Institute, China Southern Power Grid), Eleni Kemene (Lead, Materials Systems, World Economic Forum), Espen Mehlum (Head, Energy, World Economic Forum) and Kaiqi Hu (Strategy Consultant, Accenture) for their valuable contributions and feedback.