HOPES FOR 2026 AND BEYOND: It’s the time of year when we both reflect back and look ahead. To feed our thinking, we asked some of our amazing partners about what we might look forward to in energy and climate action in the new year. We also asked this insightful bunch to share the best thing they’d read this year on energy or climate.
Their perspectives yielded five clear themes:
Let’s keep advancing the past year’s realignment around the business case for clean energy—focusing on affordability, abundance, reliability, and jobs.
We need to supercharge public funding tools to push new climate technologies out of the lab and into the world while unlocking private investment at scale.
AI should drive new, world-changing innovation while also innovating to consume less power in the process.
The coming year will see continued acceleration in deployment of low-carbon energy generation and distribution. In most sectors, electrification will continue to be the driving force for global decarbonization.
On the multilateral front, we must shift from once-a-year diplomacy to year-round, real-economy action with near-term deliverables, as laid out in COP30’s Global Climate Action Agenda.
As for Speed & Scale, we agree with these ideas wholeheartedly and hope for a new wellspring of climate ambition and urgency in the year to come. For inspiration, we’re looking forward to digging into our friends’ reading recommendations below. We hope you find them as intriguing as we do.
And we wish you and yours a joyous holiday season and the opportunity to share your hopes and inspirations with one another.
— The S&S Team
