The energy sector's AI ambitions increasingly converge on a single piece of infrastructure: the grid. It is where rising electricity demand becomes a physical reality, where investment decisions play out, and where leaders increasingly expect AI to prove its worth. Yet one of the central questions facing the industry remains unresolved. Fifty-two percent of energy leaders are confident existing infrastructure can meet AI-driven electricity demand through 2030. Forty-seven percent are not. The industry was divided on the question in 2025 and remains divided today. The global split conceals a sharper geographic divide. Confidence reaches 75% in Brazil and 70% in India, but falls to 40% in the US and 38% in the UK. What has changed is the scale of what is being discussed. The IEA projects data center electricity demand will reach roughly 950 TWh by 203010, increasing the importance of a question leaders have yet to settle: can energy infrastructure keep pace with growing demand for intelligence? Leaders may be divided on whether existing infrastructure can keep pace, but there is far more agreement on what should happen next. Asked which investments would most improve grid capacity and resilience to support AI growth, 67% name grid modernization and smart grid technologies, placing them first by a wide margin, as they did a year ago. Energy storage follows at 42%, with real-time monitoring at 29%. Leaders are placing greater confidence in AI’s ability to strengthen grid capacity and reliability, but no more confidence in the infrastructure needed to support it. The resulting gap between expectation and readiness is becoming one of the defining challenges of AI’s expansion. The pattern repeats elsewhere. Asked how to get more from existing generation, leaders again put grid flexibility first at 44%, followed by accelerating the connection of new projects at 32%. Two years of data point to the same conclusion: while uncertainty remains over future demand, there is growing consensus on where investment should be directed. One thing has moved. Fifty-nine percent now expect AI to have a large impact on increasing the capacity and reliability of the grid, against something closer to 45% a year ago. Leaders have gone from expecting AI to help, to expecting it to help substantially. That expectation now sits at the center of the sector's thinking. The grid is where leaders said shared data standards should begin, and where they directed their first policy ask. It is also, on this evidence, where they expect AI to earn its keep. When the first Powering Possible report was published in 2024, energy for AI and AI for energy were emerging as two sides of the same conversation. Two years on, that relationship is becoming increasingly difficult to separate. The intelligence described throughout this report depends on energy systems that are reliable, resilient and able to grow with demand. At the same time, leaders increasingly expect AI to help build exactly those capabilities. The future of both will be shaped together. 9 GRID MODERNIZATION REMAINS KEY CONCERN 10 Key Questions on Energy and AI, World Energy Outlook Special Report, IEA, April 2026 “As AI increases demand  for power and economies continue to electrify, energy systems will be asked to do more than ever before. Meeting that challenge is not simply a question of adding capacity. It is about building a system that can adapt, integrate new technologies and respond to changing conditions with confidence. Intelligence can help us unlock more value from existing infrastructure while guiding where future investment is needed. Ultimately, resilience will come not from any single technology, but from how effectively we bring energy, infrastructure and innovation together to power the next era of growth.” Mohamed Al Ramahi CEO, Masdar 32