June arrived with a ceasefire announcement, a historic solar milestone and investment data that defies conventional wisdom. If May was defined by the shock of the Strait of Hormuz closure, June is shaping up to be the month markets try to recalibrate—with one eye still on the Middle East.
For energy marketers, the story running through it all is the same one we keep coming back to: The companies that communicate clearly and specifically, especially when conditions are uncertain, are the ones buyers remember when conditions stabilize. Whether the conversation is about supply security, greenhushing, or capital flow, clarity is the competitive advantage.
This month's roundup covers why staying silent on sustainability progress can be as costly as overstating it, how the Iran shock is accelerating the energy transition in ways climate policy struggled to do, why oil investment is falling despite high prices, solar's first-ever month above coal in the U.S. power mix, and more.
Let's dig in.
Reshuffling global energy transition priorities
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz didn’t just disrupt oil and LNG markets. It reshuffled the energy transition timeline across three continents. Bloomberg's latest data investigation tracks how governments in Asia and Europe responded to the crisis with emergency fuel measures such as accelerated subsidies, loans, and tax breaks for solar, batteries, and heat pumps. In the Philippines, a government low-interest loan program triggered a surge in residential solar installations. Spain, Portugal and Hungary rushed to build solar capacity, rapidly cutting their dependence on natural gas. The second LNG supply shock in four years has also introduced severe pricing volatility into LNG markets, prompting developing economies in Asia to balance their import dependencies by accelerating alternative, localized energy mixes.
The underlying finding is significant: The energy transition is progressing faster in the countries that need it most due to supply vulnerability. Energy security has become the primary driver of clean energy adoption in markets where it was previously secondary or aspirational. That shift is already visible in investment flows, government policy, and the conversations buyers are having with their energy suppliers.
Impact on energy marketing
The argument for new energy solutions now has a more urgent framing in global markets. Buyers who previously might have needed convincing on sustainability now need solutions to a supply-security problem they’re already living with. Companies that can emphasize their offerings’ connection to resilience, supply independence and cost stability could find a wider and more motivated audience than the one they were selling to 18 months ago.
Read the full investigation >
The misinformation tax: Greenwashing and greenhushing in energy communications
Energy companies face a communications trap that most industries don't. Overstate your sustainability progress and you risk regulatory scrutiny, investor skepticism, and a credibility hit that compounds over time. Say nothing at all and you get quietly excluded from contract opportunities, capital conversations, and the industry discourse that shapes how buyers make decisions.
Greenwashing and greenhushing are two sides of the same coin, and both carry a real price tag. Our latest piece explores this dynamic.
The antidote isn’t more or less communication, but more precise communication—the kind backed by data infrastructure, cross-functional verification, transparency and a reporting framework built to withstand scrutiny. For energy companies doing complex work on emissions, efficiency, and asset management, the takeaway is clear: If you have genuine stories to tell and real data to share, silence isn’t the strategy.
Impact on energy marketing
The grace period for vague sustainability messaging is officially over. While data-backed communication should have been the standard a decade ago, today's market has even less tolerance for aspirational fluff. In an environment defined by deep investor and buyer skepticism, shifting to precise, verifiable data isn't a forward-looking strategy—it’s a critical defense mechanism. This is a positioning decision that dictates whether clients, partners, and capital allocators still trust you to deliver.
Read more >
Oil prices are up, but investment isn’t following
Global oil and gas investment is projected to decline slightly in 2026 despite elevated prices. BMI forecasts total spending of $636 billion, a 0.5% dip from 2025, even as Brent trades well above its 2025 average. The IEA sees oil investment heading for its third consecutive annual decline. The counterintuitive picture reflects a structural shift in how the industry makes decisions; financial discipline now comes before price signals.
Most of what investment does get deployed will focus on existing fields—deemed as high-certainty, lower-risk returns—rather than new exploration. The Middle East conflict has added further caution, with some projects delayed due to ongoing uncertainties. Meanwhile, the IEA’s $3.4 trillion total energy investment projection for 2026 tells a different story: $2.2 trillion is headed toward electricity infrastructure, including grids, storage, nuclear, wind, and solar. Natural gas is seeing a surge to $330 billion, the highest annual investment in a decade, while solar investment is set to top $365 billion.
Impact on energy marketing
Capital discipline means procurement timelines are even longer and scrutiny is even higher. This makes Account-Based Marketing (ABM) an even more critical strategy. Focus your time, budget and energy on high-value targets that have the budget to spend, and leverage automation to help your sales team’s bandwidth go further. Extra points for using AI tools to identify milestones and other key events that signal which of your top targets are motivated to buy.
Read more >
Solar tops coal in the U.S. power mix for the first time ever
Solar power held a record 12.8% share of U.S. electricity in May, overtaking coal for the first full month in history. Solar generated 45.5 TWh, up 17% year-over-year and surpassing the previous record set in July 2025. Coal’s share dropped to 12.2%, the fourth-lowest monthly reading ever. Solar is now the third-largest source of U.S. electricity, behind only natural gas and nuclear.
What makes this milestone particularly striking is the broader market context. Solar and storage represented 91% of all new U.S. power capacity installed in Q1 2026, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie. Texas, Florida, and Arizona accounted for 74% of that new solar capacity.
Impact on energy marketing
For companies in renewable energy supply chain, grid infrastructure and industrial power, national digital spend is officially obsolete. Instead of broad campaigns, marketers should leverage regional grid congestion maps and interconnection queue data as primary intent indicators. By synchronizing your field marketing budgets with areas experiencing severe turbine shortages or utility capacity constraints in ERCOT and the Sunbelt, you target accounts at the exact moment their operational grid vulnerability turns into an active procurement trigger.
Learn more >
The HEX-Files: What happens when word-of-mouth stops being enough
Michael McHale bought PSA Systems in 2016 with four employees and one customer. Today, the company serves Fortune 1000 manufacturers across the packaging, heavy machining, and defense sectors and has increased its revenue fivefold. For most of that growth, PSA had no sales team, no marketing function, and no outreach strategy. They grew entirely on reputation, referrals, and relationships that followed engineers from one company to the next. In this episode of HexaGroup's HEX-Files podcast, Arnaud Dasprez talks with Michael about the moment he realized that the model had a ceiling: PSA was excellent at harvesting existing relationships but had no system for hunting new ones.
The conversation covers ground that will resonate with any industrial company at a similar inflection point. Michael walks through why long sales cycles make CRM discipline non-negotiable, and why leaders should treat sales and marketing as one budget with one goal rather than two functions competing for resources.
Impact on energy marketing
Industrial companies that have grown on relationships alone are increasingly vulnerable as those relationships age out. The contacts you’ve spent years cultivating will eventually retire or move on; if your brand has no presence beyond those individuals, you’re starting from zero with their successors. Building visibility before you need it is always the lower-risk path.
Listen to the episode >
See you in July for our next energy marketing roundup
The energy industry is shifting. Is your growth strategy built to evolve alongside it? Find out where your gaps are and how to close them before your competition does.
Then, check back with HexaGroup for the latest and greatest energy marketing strategies, straight from our B2B growth engineers. Beyond our monthly energy news roundup, we also deliver weekly insights on the HexaGroup blog, a weekly B2B growth LinkedIn newsletter, an annual energy marketing report, and, of course, the HEX-Files energy marketing podcast with new episodes dropping frequently.
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