Record investment, rising complexity: How EPCs are responding to today's power market

Posted: April 15, 2026

Despite a complex, rapidly changing global market, power sector investment is at record highs. The International Energy Agency (IEA) appraised spending at USD 3.3 trillion in 2025, a 2% increase on 2024 spending. This investment presents significant opportunities for power EPCs, but with this opportunity comes new pressure on engineering teams. Faster schedules, equipment bottlenecks, workforce constraints, and owners making capital commitments before permits are even secured: the engineering function is being asked to absorb more uncertainty, earlier, and with less margin for rework. Firms today are adapting and leveraging new technology to keep pace.

By the numbers: Power sector investment is at historic highs

• Total global energy investment: $3.3 trillion (2025) — IEA World Energy Investment 2025
• Electricity sector: $1.5 trillion — IEA
• Clean energy transition investment: $2.3 trillion (record) — BloombergNEF
  • Includes renewables, nuclear, carbon capture, hydrogen, energy storage, and power grids
• Solar PV alone: $450 billion (largest single category) — IEA
• Oil, gas, and coal combined: $1.1 trillion — IEA
  • Though spending on new LNG facilities is on an upward trajectory
• Nuclear (new plants and refurbishments): $70 billion — IEA

Why the IEA calls this the age of electricity

The IEA has dubbed this the “age of electricity.” Investment in the electricity sector was pegged at USD 1.5 trillion in 2025 by the IEA. This is 50% more than the investment in oil, gas and coal, and it represents a sea change. Only ten years ago, investment in fossil fuels was 30% higher than in electricity.[1] Electricity growth is fueled by soaring demand for industry, electric vehicles, data centers, and, of course, AI. Data center investment was at USD 500 billion in 2025 according to BNEF.[2] Meanwhile, global refinery investment in 2025 is set to fall to its lowest level in the past 10 years.[1]

Hydrogen-ready plants are expanding EPC opportunities

Though hydrogen-based generation is in its early days, developers are not waiting to invest in hydrogen-ready plants. Many are contracting greenfield gas plants today that will switch to hydrogen within a decade. India is undergoing a solar and wind buildout to produce three million tons of green hydrogen by 2030.[1] Germany is tendering 12GW of plants, with all new capacity required to run on hydrogen by 2045.[2]

In addition, the gas turbine retrofit market is potentially substantial, given the number of turbines worldwide. GE Vernova estimates over 1,600 of its existing F class turbines worldwide could be retrofitted.[3] For EPCs, this means expanding opportunities in greenfield hydrogen-ready projects and brownfield conversions of gas fleets. EPC Intel estimates that hydrogen-ready thermal builds could represent as much as 10% of global thermal EPC demand by the early 2030s.[3]

New market, new contract terms

The scale of investment is striking, but for EPCs the more consequential shift may be structural. POWER Magazine reports the traditional development sequence—plan, permit, procure, build—is being inverted. Driven by equipment lead times of five years or more and data center urgency, some owners are making major capital commitments before securing permits.[1] With supply chains tight, lead times long, and grid integration increasingly complex, EPC Intel notes that clients are seeking firms with proven execution across civil, mechanical, electrical, and grid packages.

The case for data-driven engineering

For EPCs navigating this complexity, the differentiator increasingly comes down to how firms manage engineering data across the project lifecycle. As POWER Magazine notes, data-driven project delivery is foundational to the broader move toward transparent contracting. In this environment, EPCs with greater visibility into design trade-offs, cost drivers, and schedule discrepancies are best positioned to win contracts in this market.[7]

For power projects, where electrical integrity, safety, constructability, and long‑term asset performance are critical, this shift is especially important. A data-driven approach means creating trusted engineering data once, governing it by the right discipline, and reusing it consistently across the project lifecycle. Instead of working in silos, teams across process, electrical, instrumentation, mechanical, and construction can collaborate using a shared digital backbone. This makes it possible to:

• Test and validate design decisions earlier
• Understand the downstream impact of change before it becomes costly
• Reduce rework caused by inconsistent or outdated information
• Maintain visibility from concept through commissioning and handover

Engineering without the guesswork

AVEVA’s in-house experts are hosting a webinar on “Engineering without the guesswork: A smarter way to deliver power projects.”

Join Cormac Ryan, Global Industry Principal in EPC, and William McEvoy, Global Industry Principal in Power & Utilities, on 16 April 2026 for a deep dive on the landscape today—and the latest developments in engineering software helping firms meet this moment.

^{[1]International Energy Agency, "World Energy Investment 2025," 2025, https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2025.}

^{[2]BloombergNEF, "Global Energy Transition Investment Reached Record $2.3 Trillion in 2025, Up 8% from 2024," Jan. 26, 2026, https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/bloombergnef-finds-global-energy-transition-investment-reached-record-2-3-trillion-in-2025-up-8-from-2024/.}

^{[3]EPC Intel, "The Next Decade of Power EPC Is Here and It Is Bigger, Faster and More Complex," Nov. 20, 2025, https://epcintel.com/insight/the-next-decade-of-power-epc-is-here-and-it-is-bigger-faster-and-more-complex-76.}

^{[4]"Germany, EU reach general agreement on power plant strategy." Reuters, 15 Jan. 2026, www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-tender-12-gigawatts-new-power-plant-capacity-2026-2026-01-15/.}

^{[5]GE Vernova, "The Great Retrofit: How Thousands of Natural Gas Turbines Could Potentially Run on Carbon-Free Hydrogen," Oct. 10, 2022, https://www.gevernova.com/news/reports/the-great-retrofit-how-thousands-of-natural-gas-turbines-could-potentially-run-on-carbon.}

^{[6]Sonal Patel, "Ready, Go, Set: How Disruptions Are Flipping EPC Contracting," POWER Magazine, Nov. 12, 2025, https://www.powermag.com/ready-go-set-how-disruptions-are-flipping-epc-contracting/.}

^{[7]Sonal Patel, "The EPC Partnership Paradigm: How Smart Collaboration and Digital Tools Are Driving New Delivery Models," POWER Magazine, Nov. 12, 2025, https://www.powermag.com/the-epc-partnership-paradigm-how-smart-collaboration-and-digital-tools-are-driving-new-delivery-models/.}