Global energy enterprises are facing increasing pressure to meet rising demand, while navigating aging infrastructure, security concerns, market volatility and the transition toward a lower-carbon economy. Many factors are contributing to the increasing demand for reliable and affordable energy supplies: industrial expansion, electrification, data-center growth and rising consumption in emerging markets.
This means energy enterprises must do many things at once. For example, they must improve asset productivity, optimize exploration and production, reduce operating costs and emissions, and strengthen the resilience of complex global supply chains. To address these challenges, enterprises are accelerating investments in technology, especially AI and advanced analytics, cloud and edge technologies, automation, digital twins and cybersecurity. These investments help modernize aging assets, but they also optimize upstream and downstream operations, improve predictive maintenance and operational visibility, and strengthen efficiency and resilience across the energy value chain.
As enterprises respond to so many challenges around the globe, they must prioritize when and where to focus their resources.
Where Enterprises in the Energy Industry Should Focus in 2027
- Demand growth and energy security: rapid growth in AI workloads and hyperscale data centers is increasing demand for reliable power. This creates pressure on energy infrastructure and driving investments in on-site generation, distributed energy solutions and resilient power supply systems across industrial operations.
- Investments acceleration: To improve energy resilience and reduce dependence on centralized power systems, energy enterprises are accelerating investments in distributed and on-site energy solutions, including microgrids, on-site generation, solar and battery storage. For example, in April 2026, American Refining Group and Unison Energy began construction of an on-site microgrid at its refinery in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Once operational, the on-site generation system is expected to provide more than 90% of the refinery’s electrical load.
- Asset and operations modernization: in an effort to modernize their plants, processing facilities, pipelines and field operations, energy enterprises are investing in connected sensors, industrial IoT, advanced process control, digital twins, robotics, drones and condition-based monitoring. These technologies are enabling organizations to detect equipment degradation earlier, optimize preventive maintenance schedules, reduce unplanned shutdowns, improve plant throughput and extend the life of critical assets. At the same time, the modernization of brownfield facilities is allowing enterprises to integrate newer digital technologies while limiting the need for wholesale infrastructure replacement.
- AI-driven operations: Energy enterprises continue to face challenges managing large volumes of engineering and operational data amid workforce retirements, skills shortages, the loss of institutional knowledge and increasingly complex infrastructure systems. To address these challenges, enterprises are augmenting established predictive analytics and machine-learning models with generative AI capabilities to improve engineering, maintenance and decision-making processes. Energy enterprises are using AI to improve asset reliability, optimize processes and production, analyze reservoirs and support engineering.
- Cybersecurity: Trustwave SpiderLabs' 2025 Energy & Utilities Risk Radar Report found an 80% year-over-year increase in ransomware activity in the energy sector in 2024, with the United States accounting for 47% of the ransomware attacks observed in the study. In response to these growing cyber risks, energy enterprises are upgrading their cyber defenses through AI-driven threat detection, zero-trust security architectures, enhanced incident response capabilities and stronger integration of IT and OT security.
- Digital transformation and data integration: As energy enterprises deploy AI, robotics and cybersecurity technologies across connected operations, they face a new challenge of integrating and scaling data, systems and processes across complex industrial environments. Because many energy enterprises continue to operate in a siloed combination of legacy IT systems, operational technology, engineering applications and site-specific data platforms, it can be difficult to create consistent information flows across the organization. In response, enterprises are deploying cloud architecture, industrial data platforms, IoT, digital twins and standardized data models to integrate data across engineering, operations, maintenance, supply chain and enterprise functions. These investments are enhancing operational visibility, enabling remote and connected operations and supporting more informed, data-driven decision-making across the enterprise.
How to Prioritize Tech Invesments
These six priorities will help organizations prioritize technology investments that deliver measurable operational outcomes. Reliable energy infrastructure supports operations, modernized assets improve performance and generate better data, AI turns that data into actionable insights, cybersecurity protects increasingly connected environments, and digital platforms help integrate and scale these capabilities across the enterprise.
ISG helps energy enterprises assess these priorities, develop transformation strategies and identify the best partners to help them achieve their goals. Contact us to explore how we can help you.
