Uncertain demand, volatile margins, and congested grids set the tone for October’s energy news. Demand keeps growing in every direction with no single path ahead. Refiners find profit in volatility, and grid operators connect new power using digital tools rather than new lines.
The marketing takeaway is that proof wins in a market with no single expected future. Buyers face uncertain demand, volatile margins, and slow infrastructure, so they look for partners who show measured results. Clear numbers, stated assumptions, and visible readiness build more trust than bold predictions.
This edition covers McKinsey's new global energy outlook and Bain's playbook for refiners. We also look at the IEA's case for modernizing grids and lessons from HubSpot's Unbound conference. On the HEX-Files podcast, GIDARA Energy's Dan Maloney explains how modular waste-to-syngas plants make big projects repeatable. Finally, we explain why AI engines need schema markup to cite your energy company in their prompt responses.
Let's dig in.
Energy demand keeps climbing, and no single future is likely
McKinsey's Global Energy Perspective 2026 report describes an energy transition that has become an energy expansion. Global energy demand increased 2.7% in 2025, with oil, gas, coal and renewables all growing simultaneously. The report assigns no probability to any outcome. It presents five scenarios and asks executives to take a stance.
Data centers are the fastest-growing load in OECD power markets. Their demand is projected to grow 24% per year through 2030 in the baseline scenario, then slow to 5% per year until 2040. The report calls the outlook after 2030 highly uncertain because the return on AI investment is still being proven. It also calls the grid the system's speed limit. Transmission, permitting, and interconnection determine how quickly new supply becomes usable power.
Impact on energy marketing
A marketing plan built on a single market outcome carries risk when forecasters decline to pick one. Choose three or four signposts to track, such as grid interconnection timelines or data center demand. Decide in advance how the budget shifts if each signpost changes. Thought leadership showing how your company performs across several scenarios earns more executive trust than a single bold prediction. McKinsey tells executives to take a stance; marketing teams should do the same.
Explore the five scenarios >
Schema markup is how AI learns who you are
HexaGroup's latest blog shows why AI engines such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini need clear signals from your website. Without these signals, AI tries to figure out context, authorship, and credibility from raw HTML. Schema markup tells AI what a page is and who published it.
The article says the most useful schema types are the basic ones. Organization, Person, and sameAs build trust by linking your company to profiles on sites like Wikidata, Crunchbase, and LinkedIn. Article markup with correct publish and update dates is also important. Schema helps, but your content still needs to be good enough to get cited.
Impact on energy marketing
Think of schema as part of your website’s foundation and designate someone responsible for it. Start by checking Organization, Person, and sameAs because they are low-cost and show who you are. Energy companies often have several legal entities, subsidiaries, and project names online. Keeping your entity data consistent helps AI tools link everything to your main company (if that aligns with your business’ strategy). Beyond the technical setup, make sure your content is accurate and specific.
Find out where you stand >
Refiners find profit in volatility
Bain & Company says downstream oil and gas companies can no longer count on demand growth. Demand is projected to grow just 0.5% a year through 2030. Naphtha, jet fuel, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) will grow by about 2% per year, while gasoline will decline. Volatility has changed. Bain reports that crack spread volatility is up fourfold and trading profits have roughly doubled over the past decade.
Bain names four capabilities that separate stronger operators: reaching full asset potential, integrating trading, making disciplined low-carbon investments, and rebuilding the workforce. Together, they are worth $2 to $3 per barrel, or about $110 million to $165 million per year at a 150,000-barrel-per-day site. AI accelerates all four capabilities, but expectations run ahead of results: 71% of oil and gas executives report high expectations, but only 23% see the results they wanted.
Impact on energy marketing
A 48-point gap between AI expectations and results changes how buyers in the refining business read vendor claims. Many executives have made big promises but have little to show for them. Marketing that leads with measured outcomes — think, barrels, uptime, or margin per barrel — stands out from marketing that leads with technology alone. Every case study should state the baseline, method, and result. Sales teams should use the same numbers in conversations so buyers hear one consistent story.
Read the downstream playbook >
How standard plant sizes make waste-to-fuel projects repeatable
Episode 38 of the HEX-Files explores why large waste-to-fuel projects are tough to repeat. Dan Maloney, President and COO of GIDARA Energy, shares insights from his 35 years in EPC. He says the industry is fragmented. Most developers are small, one-time companies. Development usually takes two to four years. Maloney points to industry benchmarks showing that under-spending during development increases project risk.
Based in the Netherlands, GIDARA’s High-Temperature Winkler (HTW®) technology offers a more advanced approach to gasification, transforming municipal waste into syngas pure enough for use in Sustainable Aviation Fuel, biomethanol, and other bridge fuels critical for the energy transition. While most gasification methods produce syngas only clean enough to burn for power, HTW® delivers the consistent, high-quality syngas that fuel production demands, and it has already proven it at commercial scale.
Impact on energy marketing
When projects take four to five years to reach operation, marketing has to play the long game. For GIDARA, we build content for each stage of the buying journey: basic education for early developers, technical detail for project teams, and reference data for buyers ready to decide. As the market shifts, we revisit pain points and adjust to reflect the most relevant decision drivers, from SAF mandates to energy security.
GIDARA scores leads on readiness signals like experience, location, feedstock, and offtake, and passes them to sales once the score points to a real opportunity. And because lenders, investors, and developers all want proof, we put benchmarks, standard designs, and results in front of them early. In a market still haunted by failed projects, repeatability is one of GIDARA's strongest selling points.
Listen to the episode >
The fastest new grid capacity may already be in the ground
The IEA's report on modernizing electricity grids estimates digital tools could connect up to 330 GW of new generation, storage, and demand to existing networks without reinforcement. Building that capacity with new lines would cost about $100 billion. The tools include dynamic line ratings, topology optimization, and advanced power-flow control. Most can be deployed in months instead of years. Congestion cost $12 billion in the United States in 2024.
The IEA finds the main obstacles are institutional and organizational. Among surveyed network operators, 64% cite skills and organizational readiness as major barriers, and 60% cite data quality. Technologies proven at one site often stall before becoming standard practice because each deployment must be justified again. Seventy percent of operators use AI widely for maintenance, but only 23% use it in real-time operations.
Impact on energy marketing
When every deployment is justified from scratch, the sales cycle restarts with each utility. Marketing and sales should build shared proof assets: quantified case studies, a simple value calculator, and benefit summaries a regulator can review. Utility buying committees include operations, IT, finance, and regulatory staff. Each group needs material that answers its own questions. Content that gives an internal champion evidence to win approval shortens the path from pilot to standard practice.
Read the IEA report >
Unbound 2026 shows where AI needs a human in the loop
HexaGroup Account Executive Morgan Phillips attended HubSpot's flagship event, Unbound, formerly called Inbound. His recap names AI as the biggest theme and says it sometimes reads as a buzzword. Some sessions showed clear uses of AI. Others relabeled data cleaning as AI-powered decision-making. The counterweight focused on human touchpoints within automated workflows.
Phillips also covers new channels for account-based marketing, including streaming TV advertising and ads inside AI chat tools. He shares HubSpot product news, including an AI campaign agent and a customer support agent that can answer phone calls and create tickets. Nurture agents and content agents are coming next.
Impact on energy marketing
Automation works best when a person stays in the loop. Phillips gives the example of a salesperson recording a short message from an AI-generated script written for one named contact. Energy marketers can apply the same idea to ABM sequences. Automate research and the first draft, then add a personal touch at key moments. Test new channels such as connected TV on a short list of target accounts before committing budget. Measure account-level engagement rather than impressions.
Read the Unbound recap >
See You in November
Energy companies are finding more capacity in the grids, projects, and plans they already have. Marketing teams can do the same with the content, data, and relationships already in place. Wondering where your marketing has room to grow? Take the GO Survey.
We publish this roundup on the last Tuesday of every month, but new podcast episodes and energy insights drop frequently on the HexaGroup blog and LinkedIn.
Explore more energy insights >
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