Last updated: 2025 utilities trends: Driving sustainability, value, and better customer experiences

2025 utilities trends: Driving sustainability, value, and better customer experiences

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Utilities trends 2025 are all about an industry in the midst of tremendous change. With the transition to green energy, companies are making fundamental changes to their business, decarbonizing power grids, modernizing their systems with AI, and developing new ways of driving revenue.

The energy transition is unprecedented. The US and the EU have set lofty goals to cut emissions by 40% by 2030 and to become climate-neutral by 2050, respectively.

Utility companies can make a significant impact on these climate goals: PwC found that energy consumption accounts for approximately 73% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

But as they work to bolster sustainability, utilities must perform something of a high-wire act in order to remain profitable: Meet formidable regulatory requirements while managing global financial instability and maintaining fair prices for consumers.

5 utilities trends to watch in 2025

The march towards sustainable energy includes replacing high-carbon energy sources with renewable alternatives and transforming supply and consumption patterns. This is changing how utilities companies do business and their impact they have on the planet.

While many utility companies have 2050 net-zero aspirations, 25 leaders are working to cut their CO2 emissions by 80% by 2030.

Here are five 2025 utilities trends that will accelerate the transition to sustainable energy:

  1. Growth of distributed energy resources: Utility companies will look for ways to leverage DERs and boost sustainability by working with prosumers in the energy market.
  2. Integrating AI across the utilities value chain: Artificial intelligence will help utility companies drive operational efficiency, reduce costs, and boost productivity.
  3. Personalizing customer experience: In 2025, utilities will focus on building customer trust by delivering fast, convenient, and personalized experiences.
  4. Discovering new revenue streams: Utility companies will tap their data to offer new products and drive new revenue streams.
  5. Getting better at asset management: Companies will implement intelligent management to reduce the risk of downtime, increase efficiency, and extend the lifespan of critical infrastructure.

1. The DER trend boosts utility sustainability 

The utility industry is at an inflection point: Demand is high, the need to reduce carbon emissions and transition to renewables is pressing, and new energy providers are joining the market.

These new entrants—sometimes called “prosumers”—aren’t necessarily competitors. They’re potential third-party partners that can produce, store, and even sell clean energy like solar, wind and stored battery power to traditional utility companies.

They’re producing distributed energy resources (DERs), which exist outside the traditional energy grid and are produced by commercial and residential consumers. Utility companies and prosumers enter into a two-way energy marketplace and sell the externally produced clean energy back to the utility companies.

This trend helps with grid resilience, reduces long distance transportation waste by consuming energy locally, lowers day to day operational costs for energy generation, and can even help utility companies meet their renewable energy goals faster.

In the US, distributed energy resource capacity will grow by 217 GW through 2028, according to one forecast.

Utility companies can monetize DERs and use them to improve operational efficiency and customer experience. But these benefits require new solutions to make the integration process easy so that all participants can predict and communicate supply and demand—and have the right data on hand to make mutually beneficial decisions in real time.

2. Integrating AI across the utilities value chain

AI has long been used in the energy and utilities industries. Companies initially used it to optimize fossil fuel extraction, but in 2025, it’s supporting the transition to renewables and operational efficiency.

The industry is all in when it comes to AI, including emerging generative AI tech: 95% of utilities and energy executives surveyed by Cap Gemini in 2023 were interested in the technology. Thirty-nine percent had formed a team and dedicated budget for integrating gen AI into product and service development.

When AI technology is supplied with timely and relevant data, it can benefit the entire utilities value chain by:

  • Analyzing data to determine when maintenance might be needed to avoid dangerous accidents or costly downtime
  • Helping with workforce planning to have the right number of staff on the schedule and help them reskill and upskill as new technologies emerge
  • Creating accurate forecasts of emissions and renewable energy production to meet government regulations and corporate goals
  • Updating pricing based on supply, demand, and changing storage capability as the percentage of renewables increases
  • Reducing risks associated with decision making with better data
  • Making customer service interactions more efficient to lower operational costs and boost satisfaction

AI is helping utility companies drive operational efficiency, reduce costs, and boost productivity. Integrating AI solutions now will ultimately accelerate the industry’s transition to sustainable energy.

3. 2025 trend: Utilities add the personal touch to build trust 

Customers today have high expectations for the companies they do business with, especially the utility providers they depend so heavily on. In 2025, utilities will focus on living up to their promise and building trust by delivering fast, personalized experiences.

Creating an optimal customer experience in the utilities industry means putting the infrastructure in place for personalization by collecting customer data to make relevant offers and having trained staff to carry out the plan.

Advanced cloud-based solutions help utilities with this by providing comprehensive data models that work hand in hand with backend processes. When utility employees are armed with all the data they need, they can put utility customers first by providing personalized offers and customer service.

AI will play a big role here. A Deloitte Digital study found that companies using gen AI have 35% fewer instances of service agents feeling overwhelmed by information during calls. Fifty-six percent reported higher agent productivity.

NiSource, a leading gas and electricity provider in the US, transformed its customer service by improving backend processes, adding digital self-service, and providing AI-enabled chatbots.

4. Utilities hunt for new revenue streams

Improving customer experience is essential for protecting revenue and growing it over time. But utilities can’t stop there; they need to tap into new revenue streams to ensure future profitable growth.

With the rise of data-driven solutions, utility companies have the opportunity to deliver new products based on the customer data they collect. This can be usage and outcome-based offerings or it might be an everything-as-a-service model that opens up new subscription tiers.

According to Deloitte, the average operating margin from aftermarket services worldwide is about 2.5 times that of new sales.

One example of a new type of service: a utility company offers affordable solar panel leasing to commercial and residential consumers that want to try out the renewable energy source without a full financial commitment. This brings in a new stream of revenue and could even lead to more prosumers generating DERs if they scale up solar output.

Creating these new revenue streams means responding to what customers want (including growing demand for clean energy and energy efficiency), tracking usage trends, and keeping an eye on potential use cases. The options are really limitless for new business models and product offerings in the utilities industry, but companies must devote the right resources.

The key is to interpret the signals you are getting and only provide options that fit with the trends and preferences you observe, such as add-ons to popular products to create new efficiencies for customers and value for the entire energy ecosystem.

5. Intelligent asset management boosts performance

As utilities continue shifting to green energy, intelligent asset management will become a top 2025 trend as companies look to modernize their approach.

Utilities are using technologies like the internet of things, AI, and predictive analytics to optimize asset performance and maintenance. They’re tapping into data from consumers, equipment makers and business networks to gain insight into energy usage and the status of transformers and other equipment.

This approach helps detect potential equipment failures to reduce the risk of downtime and improve efficiency. Intelligent asset management also helps utilities extend the lifespan of their critical infrastructure and avoid costly replacements.

Also, by tracking usage and consumer patterns such as which ones are most likely to become prosumers, utilities can improve their investment planning for growth.

Streamlining maintenance and operations for reduced downtime was ranked by utilities executives surveyed by Deloitte as one of the top five benefits of integrating AI into their operations.

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Accelerating the transition to sustainable energy

As the transition to renewable energy continues, utilities and energy companies press on, helping to increase global renewable energy capacity by 20% annually between 2010 and 2023. To continue working toward the goal of tripling worldwide renewable power capacity between 2023 and 2030 (from 3,870 GW to 11,174 GW), utility companies will need to lean on business models and trends that help them make a positive impact while remaining profitable.

Making data driven decisions now and setting up the infrastructure to collect the necessary data going forward can help utility companies make targeted investments that will meet demand for clean, affordable energy and reliable service in 2025 and in the years ahead.

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