EnergyCAP State of Utilities 2026: Energy industry trends

Utility costs keep climbing. For most organizations, that’s not news—it’s the new normal. What is news is how much pressure that’s putting on the teams managing it: higher spend, the same headcount, tougher questions from leadership, and less margin for error.

To understand how energy and utilities teams are actually navigating this, we surveyed hundreds of professionals across key industries for the EnergyCAP State of Utilities 2026 report. Here’s what stood out.

Key findings from the survey

• Utility budgets are climbing: 76% of organizations expect their 2026 utility budgets to increase
• Cost control tops the list: 69% say controlling or reducing utility spend is their No. 1 goal
• A confidence gap is evident: executives are the only group reporting 100% confidence in meeting goals and budgets, while day-to-day energy, facilities, and finance teams are raising concerns as complexity grows

The utility confidence gap is getting wider

Here’s a finding worth sitting with: the people most confident about utility budgets and goals are also the furthest from the work. Executives reported 100% surety. Individual contributors and managers? Much less so.

That gap matters because it shapes the conversations teams have about tools, staffing, data quality, and resources they need to succeed. The fastest path to closing that gap is speaking leadership’s language. The teams making progress are the ones who lead with the numbers executives care about, but still connect those outcomes back to the operational work that produced them.

Confidence in utility management doesn’t come from optimism. It comes from clean data, repeatable processes, and forecasting you can count on even as rates shift or weather changes.

Finding waste matters more than ever

Across both EnergyCAP customers and non-customers, “find and fix waste faster” lands at the top of the 2026 goals list. That consistency is telling: regardless of how mature your program is, there’s still waste to find, and the pressure to find it faster is only growing as budgets tighten.

The full report breaks down where organizations are getting stuck, and what the teams making real progress are doing differently. If you need a quick refresher on what may be driving billing complexity in your organization, start by understanding the details of your utility bill charges.

Get the charts and ready-to-share insights

The EnergyCAP State of Utilities 2026 report has the stats, visuals, expert commentary, peer findings, and ready-to-share insights you need for leadership updates and cross-team conversations in one place.

Download the EnergyCAP State of Utilities 2026 report to see what hundreds of your peers are dealing with, what’s working, and what’s not.

Want more? Rewatch our webinar, The Utility Confidence Gap: Closing the Distance Between Plans and Reality to review the executive confidence gap findings in-depth. You can also view Beyond the Basics: Roadmap to Smarter Energy Operations in 2026 for practical ways to strengthen your process.

Our survey report methodology

EnergyCAP and Centiment gathered data for this report by surveying 202 individual contributors, managers, directors, and C-suite executives who are directly involved in or aware of their company’s energy management and budget strategy.

Individuals were either existing EnergyCAP customers or worked in higher education with 5k+ students, state and local governments with 76k+ residents, healthcare with 5k+ employees, or retail with 5k+ employees.

Data was collected between January 1st and February 18th, 2026. Survey data is unweighted, and the margin of error is approximately +/-6% with a 90% confidence level.