The HEX-Files Energy Marketing News Roundup: August 2026

Solar power quietly crossed a milestone recently. The money chasing grid-scale storage can't move faster than the interconnection queues everyone is stuck in. Industrial electricity demand keeps climbing anyway. These are three signals of an energy system scaling in every direction at once, often faster than the infrastructure meant to carry it.

The same tension appears wherever ambition outruns execution. A big goal is only as good as the system built to support it, and a brand story only lands if something durable backs it up. This edition of The HEX-Files is as much about the gap between ambition and infrastructure as it is about megawatts.

In this edition, we’ll look at how solar quietly crossed 3 terawatts of global capacity, why the money pouring into battery storage can't outrun the grid's bottlenecks, and what accelerating electricity demand means for the system that carries it all. We also talk to a CEO turning waste tires into recovered steel and energy, break down how to actually set and hit an ambitious growth goal, and pull a few B2B marketing lessons from this summer's biggest movies.

Let's dig in.

Solar quietly crossed 3 terawatts. Almost no one noticed.

The first terawatt of global solar capacity took a decade to build. The second took less than three years. Though the exact timing is still debated among analysts, sometime in 2026 the world quietly crossed the 3-terawatt mark. Almost nobody noticed. BloombergNEF expects deployment to exceed 9 terawatts by 2036.

The geography of that growth has shifted. China now drives most global deployment, but the boom has spread beyond it. Pakistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines have seen extraordinary uptake of rooftop solar. The number of countries with at least 1 gigawatt installed grew from 42 in 2020 to 74 last year. BloombergNEF's researchers are already flagging the next constraint: without enough storage to shift midday solar into the evening, additional solar capacity stops adding value.

Impact on energy marketing

Most content about solar's scale still defaults to U.S. and European numbers, even though the fastest-growing part of this story is happening in markets most competitors aren't covering. A concise explainer on where solar is scaling now, and why, does more for a firm's credibility with a global client base than another domestic policy recap.

See where solar is scaling >

How to set (and actually achieve) that ever-elusive BHAG

In 1962, JFK announced the U.S. would go to the moon “not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” The line everyone remembers communicates audacity, but what’s worth remembering is the line that follows: A goal like this exists to “organize and measure” an organization's best energies and skills.

HexaGroup's recent blog applies that discipline to Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) in energy and industrial companies. It’s critical to set these goals but the follow-through is equally important. Pressure-test the goal against real capability and whitespace, make it specific enough that anyone on your team can repeat it word for word, break it into owned workflows, and track progress just like you would for operational goals.

Impact on energy marketing

Why do most BHAGs die? Often, the goal stays in the boardroom and never makes it to marketing, sales or service. This is a silo problem more than an execution problem. If leadership sets a real BHAG this year, or already has one in place, work to make it both known and compelling for teams across the organization. Because a true BHAG can’t be achieved unless every part of a workforce embraces it and takes ownership in the progress that’s made. 

Engineer your BHAG >

Money is chasing storage faster than the grid can move

Battery storage is the fastest-growing part of the grid, but it is also the most stuck. More than 2.6 terawatts of storage and clean energy projects sit in U.S. interconnection queues, and roughly 80% will withdraw before getting built. Projects that reached commercial operation in 2025 spent an average of eight years waiting in PJM's queue alone as utilities scrambled to source transformers and circuit breakers for grid upgrades that had already been delayed for decades.

None of that is scaring off capital. PwC's mid-year M&A outlook found reliability is now the central thesis behind energy dealmaking, with buyers directing capital toward transmission, storage, and other grid-enabling assets rather than speculative greenfield development. The firms writing the checks are betting on the kind of grid-connected, deliverable capacity currently backed up for years.

Impact on energy marketing

For grid-service and storage vendors, this is a two-sided story: Deals are made on the promise of reliable, connected capacity, but the delivery timeline runs through utility upgrade cycles that most buyers don't fully understand. Marketing and sales teams that walk buyers through realistic interconnection timelines, not just capacity specs, will out-position competitors still selling on megawatts alone.

See the storage bottleneck >

Solving tire waste took 10 years and zero interest in being famous

In episode 37 of The HEX-Files, Chris Hare, CEO of PRTI Inc., explains the problem his company spent over a decade solving. Roughly 330 million passenger and light-truck tires are discarded every year in the U.S. alone; globally, that’s 1.5 to 2 billion. In the 200 years since vulcanization was invented, almost no one has figured out how to break them down. PRTI's patented process, protected in 57 countries, converts end-of-life tires into recovered carbon black, recovered steel, and a renewable energy resource. The process is run by a team of about 20 people on a largely automated line.

The more interesting thread for marketers is how deliberately small Hare keeps PRTI's public footprint. He’s not chasing household-name status or magazine covers. He has done "a handful of podcasts" in the past year and relies on objective third-party validation, studies from government agencies, regulators, and independent engineering firms to build credibility that advertising cannot. When PRTI opened its North Carolina site, the state's governor and a senator reportedly asked why they chose the location. Hare's answer was "because we live here."

Impact on energy marketing

The most transferable lesson here is about word choice. Hare deliberately avoids leading with "recycling" or "green." He frames PRTI around energy and financial efficiency because those terms carry stigma for some audiences and invite skepticism for others, depending on their political views. For companies in similarly technical, sensitive categories, this is a useful test for any messaging. Does the language sell the outcome, or does it just signal a value some buyers do not share?

Listen to the episode >

What this summer's biggest movies can teach B2B marketers

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey stormed into theaters this summer as one of the biggest openings in his career. HexaGroup's latest blog takes a page from  The Odyssey  and other blockbusters, to explore critical marketing lessons. 

The two most interesting insights for B2B companies? How Nolan uses his personal credibility to sell what no ad budget could buy and how The Bear shows that a repeatable process beats individual talent, especially in high-pressure situations.

Impact on energy marketing

The founder-led marketing case is worth pressure-testing internally. Does your leadership show up with a point of view, or does the brand voice stay anonymous? Earned media, executive bylines, and conference stages do for B2B credibility what Nolan's insistence on 70mm film did for  The Odyssey. They make the format part of the story, not just the distribution.

Electricity demand is accelerating, not slowing down

Global electricity demand growth accelerated 3.6% in 2026 and is expected to spike by 3.8% in 2027, up from 3% in 2025, according to the IEA's Electricity Mid-Year Update 2026. The structural drivers include industrial growth, rising EV use, air conditioning and heat pump adoption, and expanding data center capacity. China's demand growth is accelerating to 5.5%, India's is rebounding to 7%. Even slower-growing markets like the U.S. and EU are running at around 2%.

Led by solar, renewables are absorbing much of that growth. Solar PV will overtake wind this year to become the world's second-largest source of renewable electricity. Renewables will also overtake coal in the global generation mix for the first time. That's good news for emissions, but it means more variable generation landing on grids already straining to connect the storage capacity built to balance it.

Impact on energy marketing 

Demand growth at this pace is also a talent problem hiding in plain sight. Each structural driver—industrial electrification, EV charging buildout, and data center expansion—needs engineers, technicians, and project managers to get built. For industrial and grid-service clients, recruitment content and employer brand are part of capacity planning, just like megawatts.

Get the full outlook >

See you in September

This month's throughline was simple: Ambition without infrastructure is just words, and that sentiment applies whether we’re talking about a solar deployment curve, a BHAG, or a brand built around one clear idea. Take the GO Survey to find the gaps that are keeping your ambition from becoming reality.

We publish this roundup on the last Tuesday of every month, but new podcast episodes and energy insights drop frequently on the HexaGroup blog, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and LinkedIn. 

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