The HEX-Files Energy Marketing News Roundup: July 2026

Oil markets have swung sharply both ways this summer, utilities are racing to fund a data center-driven capacity boom, and gas producers are underwriting decades of demand growth—three signals pointing to the same theme: durability beats a single good quarter.

The same discipline appears on the marketing side this month. Whether a utility funds a decade-long capex plan or a B2B brand decides how to show up on video and LinkedIn, this edition reminds us that one-off moves don't compound. Systems do.

This edition looks at how oil markets have fluctuated since June, what a fresh round of utility spending means for the data centers reshaping the grid, and why LNG producers are underwriting demand growth through 2050. We also sit down with a solar recycling founder tackling the industry's next billion-dollar liability, break down what it takes to build a repeatable video strategy, and help you get more out of LinkedIn. 

Let's dig in.

Oil Markets Show How Fast Sentiment Can Flip

Global oil supply rebounded sharply in June, climbing 4.1 mb/d to 98.8 mb/d after a multi-month shortfall. Brent crude averaged $85 a barrel for the month of June, $22 lower than May's average, as the additional supply worked its way into the market. The IEA's latest Oil Market Report shows demand recovering off its seasonal low over the same period, with product supplies rebounding in step.

That calm didn't hold. Prices have since moved well above $100 a barrel in the back half of July, as renewed disruption risk at the Strait of Hormuz pushed the market sharply higher again. Taken together, the two moves are a reminder that oil markets can reprice just as fast in one direction as the other, and that a single month's average is a snapshot, not a forecast.

Impact on energy marketing

A swing this sharp puts pressure on messaging more than most single events this year. Sales teams need talking points that hold up whether Brent sits at $85 or well above $100, and content built around one price assumption ages fast. The stronger play is content that explains the mechanics of a swing—supply, storage, seasonal demand—rather than a forecast that a single headline can undo.

The Solar Panel Waste Problem No One's Marketing Around

In Episode 27 of The HEX-Files, host Arnaud Dasprez talks with Pablo Dias, co-founder and CTO of SOLARCYCLE, about the aging fleet of U.S. solar panels headed for landfills and the recycling infrastructure being built to intercept it. Dias walks through how SOLARCYCLE extracts aluminum, silver, and glass from retired panels, and why domestic manufacturing plays a role in closing that loop.

The conversation goes beyond technology to the trust problem: how a young company proves its recycling claims are real rather than what Dias calls "sham recycling," through audited mass balances and clear reporting. That credibility question is one every emerging clean-tech category eventually has to answer.

Impact on energy marketing

Dias built SOLARCYCLE's early credibility largely through organic channels rather than paid campaigns, treating transparency and third-party audits as the marketing asset. For companies entering a category before regulation or standards catch up, that's a workable playbook: publish the proof before anyone asks for it, and let earned media and word-of-mouth carry the message instead of leading with claims a skeptical buyer has to take on faith.

Listen to the episode >

LNG Producers Are Betting on Decades, Not Quarters

Shell's LNG Outlook 2026 projects global demand will climb to nearly 700 million tonnes a year by 2050, an increase of roughly 65% from 2025 levels. The outlook credits the growth to countries prioritizing the flexibility and reliability that gas and LNG offer as they manage their own energy security needs.

That's a long runway built on the premise that buyers value optionality. Countries that can't yet fully rely on intermittent generation are underwriting LNG contracts that stretch decades, treating gas less as a bridge fuel and more as a permanent piece of the mix.

Impact on energy marketing

A 2050 demand curve highlights that LNG sales cycles span years rather than quarters. Buyers, including import terminal operators, national utilities, and industrial offtakers, negotiate capacity well in advance. This creates a classic account-based marketing challenge: few high-value accounts, extended decision timelines, and stakeholders who require ongoing technical engagement instead of one-time campaigns.

See the full outlook >

Video Killed the Radio Star. Your B2B Content Strategy Should, Too

MTV launched on August 1, 1981, with “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The song was about the disruptive power of the medium that was about to broadcast it. Forty-five years later, B2B energy and industrial companies still treat video as a one-off project rather than a core part of how they build credibility in the market.

HexaGroup's article makes the case for building a repeatable video system rather than commissioning isolated productions. The argument is practical: in industrial B2B, buyers often never see your facilities, meet your engineers, or observe the precision of your field operations. Video closes that distance. The piece also breaks down how to match video format to the buyer journey stage—brand-level storytelling for awareness, 3D animation and explainers for technical understanding, field footage for credibility, and team profiles for long-term relationship-building.

Impact on energy marketing

The energy companies that pull ahead in the next few years will be the ones that treat video as a system, not a project. One video per year does not build authority. A consistent cadence, matched to the right stage of the buyer journey, does. If your video strategy currently consists of a company overview sitting on a web page, this is worth reading.

Build your video system >

Who Pays for the Grid AI Needs?

Regulatory Research Associates has now projected that U.S. spending on utility capital will hit a record high of $1.295 trillion from 2026 through 2030. S&P Global's analysis attributed the increase directly to data centers and other large loads, with the company projecting that U.S. power demand for data centers will nearly triple by 2030. In June, the FERC issued a "justify-or-reform" order that required the six regional grid operators to either justify their existing interconnection timelines or reform them to fast-track large loads.

A key issue now is determining who will bear these costs. According to PJM's Independent Market Monitor, as reported by Fortune, projected data center demand is the main factor behind $23 billion in customer price increases across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, a trend expected to continue through at least 2028. Utilities allocate infrastructure costs based on “coincident peak demand,” but data centers can adjust their consumption in real time, potentially avoiding a significant share of these costs while still drawing large amounts of power at other times. State utility commissions oversee this process, yet residential customers often lack the advocacy resources available to utilities, large industrial users, and data center operators.

Impact on energy marketing

This shifts the focus from capital expenditures to cost allocation, which has become the central issue in AI-driven power markets. For utility and grid-service vendors targeting hyperscalers, the most affected accounts are valid ABM targets. Procurement and legal teams at data center operators are closely monitoring these rate cases and require support in modeling and defending their positions. Content addressing these needs, such as rate-case explainers, cost-allocation trackers, and regulatory briefings, also serves as effective sales enablement.

Six LinkedIn Features Your B2B Team Is Ignoring

Most B2B companies still treat LinkedIn like a bulletin board, missing tools built for exactly the kind of trust-building energy and industrial brands need. HexaGroup's latest blog walks through six underused features: newsletters, long-form articles, cross-posting, the Creator Marketplace, and native analytics.

The common thread is sequencing. Experts publish, company pages amplify, and outside creators extend reach beyond what a brand page can alone; each feature reinforces the next rather than competing for the same five minutes of a follower's attention.

Impact on energy marketing 

None of these features require new budget, just a system for using what's already free. That makes this one worth handing to whoever owns your digital channels: audit which of the six your team already has access to, then build a simple cadence for who publishes and who cross-posts and when, so LinkedIn compounds instead of resetting every week.

Put the features to work >

See you in August for our next energy marketing roundup

This month made it clear that, whether it's a utility funding a decade of grid upgrades or a brand deciding how often to show up on video, the accounts and audiences that stick around are the ones being treated as a system, not a series of one-off swings. Take the GO Survey to see where the gaps are in your own growth engine.

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

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