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Navigating the future of power delivery

  • Blog
  • 11 minute read
  • March 05, 2026

Daryl Walcroft

US Capital Projects and Infrastructure Leader, PwC US

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Ralph Roam

Principal, Capital Projects and Infrastructure, PwC US

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For decades, power delivery investment followed a familiar pattern. Discrete triggers such as a new regulation, blackouts or leaks, or a specific business case set off targeted waves of activity: grid modernization, transmission and distribution reliability, tax credit driven renewable integration, and other industry defining initiatives. While each cycle represented an increase for normal operations, they unfolded largely in sequence, giving utilities, independent power producers, and other power delivery owners, referred to herein as owners and developers, the ability to plan, fund, and execute in a relatively routine manner.

Today’s energy landscape looks very different. Power delivery is entering the largest investment cycle in decades, with more than $5 trillion in grid spending1 required by 2050 to support a projected 150% increase in electricity demand. Instead of one major program at a time, utilities now face a single, sustained wave of work across four fronts: expanding transmission; modernizing distribution networks; enabling the supply transition through renewables, storage and distributed resources; and hardening the system to improve resilience and reliability.

This convergence is reshaping what it takes to succeed. Owners and developers are being asked to advance multiple large‑scale capital programs in parallel, on faster timelines, and under sharper scrutiny than in past investment cycles. PwC analyzed this convergence, the challenges it creates for capital delivery, and the actions owners and developers can take to keep pace.

$1.1T

Estimate for US grid investments between 2025 and 2029.

75,000

Estimate for the miles of new transmission lines required to be installed by 2035 to keep up with energy demand.

50%

The expected percentage of installed capacity between 2025 and 2030 that will be renewables.

100

Gigawatts of coal and nuclear energy capacity expected to be retired by 2030, deepening the need for replacement sources.

Capital allocation Why this power delivery investment cycle is different

The Edison Electric Institute estimates that investor-owned utilities will make roughly $1.1 trillion in grid investments between 2025 and 2029, with 80% of those investments focused on distribution, generation, and transmission.2

Expansion of the transmission system is critical to meet unprecedented growth in electricity demand and renewable generation capacity. Roughly 75,000 miles of new transmission lines will be needed to meet that expected increase in power demand. This massive buildout contrasts sharply with the historical pace of delivery in 2023, when only 255 miles of new transmission lines were built nationwide.3

To accelerate the pace of transmission line construction, utilities are ramping up investments in new high-voltage lines, regional transmission projects, reconductoring, and advanced line-rating technologies. Without streamlining regulatory approvals and significantly improving execution speed, the ambitious targets set for 2030 and 2035 could be at risk.

As load grows and electrification accelerates, utilities are modernizing their networks with automation, digital substations, advanced metering, and local storage that improve flexibility, support two-way power flows, and strengthen reliability.

Modern distribution networks must now handle more dynamic load patterns and more distributed activity at the grid edge than in past investment cycles. Long-lead equipment constraints, especially for transformers and other critical components, are adding pressure to project schedules and extending delivery timelines.

The supply landscape is shifting on multiple fronts at once. Renewables are expected to make up 50% of installed capacity by 2035,4 and roughly one terawatt of new generation is projected to come online between 2025 and 2030. At the same time, utilities are bringing online new gas-fired units (both traditional and combined cycle technologies), and next-generation nuclear energy facilities.

This build-out is occurring alongside a historic wave of retirements. By 2030, the system is expected to retire 100 gigawatts of coal and nuclear energy capacity, supported by $30–$40 billion in decommissioning activity. These retirements deepen the need for replacement capacity, and shift where and how supply should be integrated into the grid.

As weather, aging assets, and rising expectations put new stress on the grid, utilities are replacing poles and wires, undergrounding selective segments, deploying automation and self-healing technologies, strengthening cybersecurity, and modernizing protection systems to reduce outages and restore service faster.

These pressures are compounded by delivery constraints within transmission and distribution infrastructure itself. Many resilience and hardening programs depend on the same transmission and distribution equipment already in short supply. Transformers, breakers, conductors, and protection equipment face extended lead times and rising costs across both networks, slowing the pace of upgrades and constraining delivery capacity.

Supply-chain strain hits resilience work especially hard because delays on a single component can stall entire feeder or substation hardening efforts. As reliability expectations grow and weather-driven impacts intensify, resilience work requires faster planning, clearer prioritization, and more coordinated execution than in past cycles.

Project delivery Delivery constraints impacting today's power delivery investments

Even before today’s convergence of investments, many large capital projects struggle to stay on schedule and on budget. The simultaneous push across transmission expansion, distribution modernization, supply transition, and resilience is now compounding those pressures. Owners and developers are being asked to deliver more work, in more parts of the system, on faster timelines than their existing delivery models, supply chains, and workforce capacity were designed to support.

With power delivery capital programs advancing in parallel, organizations need faster insight into emerging issues, quicker approvals, clearer prioritization, and more integrated planning. PwC research shows executives consistently rank internal decision speed and cross-functional coordination among the top barriers to delivering planned investments. If governance doesn’t evolve to match the pace of delivery, projects stack up, rework increases, delays spread across entire portfolios rather than being contained within a single program, and cost recovery becomes more difficult.

One clear sign of this shift is the growth in energy-focused private capital. Energy-focused private capital funds raised an average of $11.6 billion from 2019 to 2023. The average raised nearly tripled in 2024 to $34.8 billion, more than 17 times the amount from a decade ago. Across both specialist and generalist funds, a total of $518 billion has been committed to North American energy-related infrastructure since 2014. An estimated $325 billion is still dry powder, or capital that has been raised but not yet invested, a sign private equity firms are gearing up for one of the largest infrastructure investment cycles in decades.5

This surge in private capital brings sharper expectations. Investors are pushing for tighter timelines, clearer justification of spending, and more frequent and transparent reporting on progress and outcomes. At the same time, policy uncertainty, tariff decisions, and rate pressures are adding complexity. Owners and developers should align more closely with regulators, investors, developers, and large-load customers to keep programs moving at the required pace.

Concurrent transmission, distribution, and generation investments are driving demand for long-lead equipment and specialized components at a pace supply chains cannot match.

Transmission and distribution transformers are both seeing longer lead times and 25–60% unit cost increases. High-voltage conductors, breakers, control systems, and gas turbines all face similar constraints, and manufacturing capacity is concentrated in a small number of global players. One recent estimate suggests that up to $400 billion in planned gas-fired additions could be delayed by turbine manufacturing constraints.

These pressures do more than slow individual projects. When critical equipment is delayed, schedule risk compounds across entire portfolios, tying up capital, forcing constant resequencing of work, and increasing the likelihood that even well-funded programs will miss their delivery commitments.

The workforce challenge has become a defining constraint. Meeting today’s capital program demands is expected to require an additional 450,000 to 1 million engineers, and about 40% of executives report difficulty hiring for critical roles. There are not enough skilled engineers, planners, estimators, project managers, and craft labor to meet the combined needs of concurrent programs. Retirements, tight labor markets, and limited training pipelines make meeting delivery demands more challenging. As a result, organizations struggle to maintain pace, and critical work is delayed.

“Electricity demand is accelerating faster than the infrastructure, permitting throughput, supply chain capacity, and workforce needed to deliver it. The system is approaching a breaking point where delays are no longer an inconvenience. Instead, they become a direct risk to reliability, customer costs, and stakeholder confidence.”

Ralph Roam,Principal, Capital Projects and Infrastructure, PwC US

Capital programs The capabilities needed to deliver converging grid capital programs

Delivering the required scale and complexity of capital programs compels owners and developers to strengthen how they plan, govern, staff, and deliver work. To overcome these pressures, organizations should focus on the following priorities that address today’s delivery demands.

Modernizing governance shifts capital delivery from project-by-project oversight to managing the portfolio as a whole. It defines who decides what and when, including prioritization criteria, funding shifts, change thresholds, and when scope or sequencing decisions require leadership action. It also sets up decision frameworks for resolving cross-project conflicts, such as shared workforce bottlenecks, long-lead equipment dependencies, outage windows, and interconnection timing.

Done well, governance is supported by a single source of truth for portfolio performance. Leaders can see cost, schedule, risk, and outcomes together, spot constraints early, and make decisions that protect delivery targets across programs, not just within individual projects.

With more stakeholders influencing timelines and outcomes, even small misalignments carry outsized cost and scheduling consequences. Owners and developers should bring transparency and consistency to planning. That means clarifying who needs to see what, from boards and regulators to developers and large-load customers, and anchoring them all to shared objectives. When progress, costs, and risks are communicated consistently, capital delivery programs move with fewer surprises.

Supply-chain stress is a material risk to capital delivery. Long-lead equipment shortages already drive schedule delays and cost increases, especially for transmission and substation work. As concurrent programs grow, these pressures intensify and delays on one program increasingly cascade into others.

To help address this, owners and developers need a multi-year view of labor, equipment, and material demand alongside the portfolio’s ability to plan, source, and execute work at scale. This includes understanding which components and materials are shared across programs, aligning sourcing and contracting strategies across projects, and giving manufacturers, suppliers, and delivery partners clear visibility into upcoming needs. It also requires integrating realistic equipment lead times into baseline plans, using scenario modeling and quantitative risk analytics to test disruption cases, and linking supply constraints to schedule and cost impacts through integrated cost and schedule analysis. The goal is to make earlier, better-informed decisions on long-lead items, balancing the value of timeline protection against the risk of committing too early as scope and sequencing evolve.

Competition for planners, schedulers, estimators, project managers, engineers, and craft labor is higher than ever, and any shortages are felt across portfolios. Owners and developers should treat workforce planning as intentionally as capital and materials. That means understanding the skills required across programs, strengthening internal talent pipelines and upskilling paths, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and planning for continuity where retirements and turnover may leave gaps. Meeting today’s workforce and capability challenges also requires considering every available delivery model: direct hiring, third-party labor, and outsourced delivery should all be evaluated early to identify the approach that better supports program needs.

Capital projects generate an enormous amount of data across cost, schedule, risk, commercial, engineering, and supply chain functions. Without integrated, real-time visibility into this information, leaders end up buried in data instead of seeing the signals that matter to delivery.

While AI’s potential is vast, for capital project leaders it’s quickly becoming a valuable tool for predicting what’s coming next. Machine learning, for example, analyzes data from past projects to anticipate outcomes, strengthen forecasting, and improve execution.

Tools such as integrated project controls systems, portfolio dashboards, and predictive analytics can turn data into foresight, highlighting trends before they become delays, enabling scenario planning across constraints, and giving teams a consistent, trusted view of the portfolio. Standardized metrics and definitions help everyone, from engineers to executives, operate from the same facts and focus on the insights that matter, not the noise that surrounds them.

Capital strategy Power delivery at scale requires a new model for capital execution

Today’s power delivery investment cycle marks a clear break from the past. What used to be a series of capital programs is now a single, overlapping build that spans the grid. Electricity demand is accelerating faster than the infrastructure, permitting throughput, supply chain capacity, and workforce needed to deliver it. The system is approaching a breaking point where delays are no longer an inconvenience. They are becoming a direct risk to reliability, customer costs, and stakeholder confidence.

Capital execution is the main constraint in the current environment and a new approach is required. Owners and developers must adopt governance that speeds decision-making and maintains portfolio discipline. Planning should align key stakeholders with common priorities, while supply chain and workforce strategies need to account for equipment limits and ensure capacity growth in critical roles. Digital tools should turn data into actionable insights and foresight used to manage outcomes.

This cycle of infrastructure investment presents a rare chance to shape the power delivery system for the future, enabling sustained growth over time. Organizations that update their delivery methods will be better equipped to operate quickly and effectively, even when facing constraints. Adapting to the challenges inherent in delivery is essential. Without necessary changes, backlogs could outpace progress. By modernizing approaches for how power delivery investments are delivered, organizations position themselves to deliver with greater efficiency, reliability, and consistency.

Drew Miller, Will Vagle, Eric Uhl, Ben Rosenberg and Kevin Bailey contributed to this report.

Sources:

1. Aminoff, Felicia. “Electric Vehicles Remain Key Driver for Grid Investment Despite Data Center Boom. BloombergNEF. September, 2, 2025.
2. EEI. Industry Capital Expenditures 2025-2029.
3. Murlless, Kelsey and Londagin, Shane. “Tracking Transmission Trends: A Timeline of Recent Key Federal Actions. Third Way. June 20, 2024.
4. Nema.org. “Grid Flexibility Study. January 2025.
5. Villegas, Anikka; Good, Sara. "Infrastructure Funds Fuel the Energy Transition." PitchBook. October 28, 2024. PwC analysis of supplementary data.

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