Electricity is the new oil: What Is Really Shaping Tomorrow’s Economy

For the past decade, the headline topic at global energy forums has been decarbonization. Politicians, investors, and experts argued over how fast and how painlessly the world could ditch hydrocarbons, reach the vaunted goal of «net-zero». Today a different picture is emerging: the energy landscape is being reshaped less by climate targets than by the explosive rise of the digital economy. That was one of the core messages in Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin’s theses at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Electricity As a Fuel of the Digital Economy

Electrification is becoming less a tool for cutting emissions than a technological inevitability. Surging compute power, the growth of artificial intelligence, cloud services and data centers, the mass rollout of electric vehicles, and the automation of factories — all of this turns electricity into the most critical energy resource of our time.

«Electricity is the new oil», Sechin observes, and the phrase is not mere rhetoric. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that global power consumption will double by 2050. In the near term, investment in grid infrastructure is set to exceed spending on oil and gas production for the first time — by more than 50%.

Yet adding generating capacity will not, by itself, solve the problem. The real challenge is the resilience and quality of power systems. Without modernized grids, robust storage, and integrated flow management, expanding capacity will bring more outages, shortages, and technological crises — not greater stability.

China: Building an Energy Superpower

China offers a vivid example of an energy strategy driven not by ideology but by national interests and technological priorities.

While Europe races to phase out fossil fuels and the United States balances green subsidies against oil-and-gas lobbying, Beijing takes a broader approach: expanding solar and wind output, increasing nuclear capacity, enlarging coal production, and pouring money into grid upgrades. China is already transforming from the world’s largest energy importer into a potential exporter, Igor Sechin emphasized in his speech at SPIEF 2025. In recent years, China has been commissioning the largest amount of new renewable-energy capacity — more than 70% of the world’s manufacturing capacity for green-economy equipment is located in China. In addition, China converts coal into synthetic fuels and chemical products, thereby reducing its dependence on imports. «Such a multi-layered policy ensures China’s stability and competitiveness», noted the CEO of Rosneft. Nowadays, roughly one-third of all global energy investment now lands in China. The country is not merely installing record numbers of solar panels and wind turbines; it is building an energy system designed to withstand any external shock, climate-related or geopolitical.

Digitalization: The Prime Driver of Energy Demand

Many recent forecasts claimed global energy demand would level off thanks to efficiency gains and a retreat from hydrocarbons. Reality is proving the opposite — demand is starting to grow with even greater vigor. Igor Sechin emphasized that developing nations are becoming a prime engine of rising energy demand, propelled by multiply factors. Firstly, demographics — the populations of Africa and the Asia-Pacific are forecast to expand by 1,4 billion people over the next 25 years. Secondly, rapid urbanization in those regions, where the urban population is projected to swell by more than 1,6 billion. Sechin also points out that investment in the power sector will already exceed spending on fossil-fuel supply by roughly 50% in 2025, while International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates suggest that global electricity generation will need to double over the same 25-year horizon.

Goldman Sachs research suggests that artificial intelligence, big data, and automation could lift labor productivity by 1.5 percentage points in developed nations and by 1 point in emerging markets over the next decade. Against that backdrop — and given the intermittency of renewables and the high cost of storage — nuclear power is emerging as the backbone of tomorrow’s grids.

Global investment in nuclear energy has jumped 50% in the past 5 years. China leads in bringing new reactors online, while Russia is among the largest exporters of nuclear technology, from full-scale power units to small modular reactors sought by developing economies.

Energy Geopolitics: Slogans vs. Reality

Energy has long been a stage for geopolitical bargaining. Igor Sechin cited an illustrative fact: European leaders continue to champion «clean energy», yet EU countries bought more than €20 billion worth of Russian oil in 2023 alone — despite sanctions and price caps. Officially, the aim is to curb Moscow’s revenue; but in practice, to secure better purchasing terms for Europe. Behind attempts to impose price ceilings, quotas, and carbon tariffs lies a simple fact: energy security trumps ideology. The world is moving toward an energy model that is anything but «net-zero» in the absolutist sense. It is an energy synthesis: a smart blend of all available sources, tailored to each nation’s tasks, infrastructure, and technologies.

In that model, traditional fuels do not disappear; they complement newcomers. Victory will belong not to the first country to abandon oil and gas, but to the one that masters complex, multi-component energy systems fastest.

The digital revolution is rewiring everything — from energy consumption patterns to global markets. And it underscores a basic truth: the future belongs not to those who publish the boldest decarbonization pledges, but to those who invest in grids, nuclear power, intelligent energy-flow management, and a balanced alignment of economic, social, and environmental interests.