Siemens: Energy security overtakes climate goals in global transition

The biennial Siemens Infrastructure Transition Monitor, released on October 27, surveyed 1,400 senior executives across 22 countries and finds that governments and businesses are increasingly prioritising resilience and self-sufficiency over multilateral climate goals. The report highlights a growing focus on securing domestic energy supply, modernising industrial systems, and strengthening national infrastructure to withstand global disruptions.

Senior leaders now view a resilient energy supply as the top governmental priority among infrastructure transition goals – up from third place in 2023.

National energy independence and proactive climate risk management have also risen sharply in importance.

According to the report, rising global instability is fuelling market and supply chain volatility. To reduce the risk of energy being used as a geopolitical tool, governments are focusing on security, self-reliance, and preparedness alongside climate mitigation.

The study underscores a clear shift – from a multilateral clean-energy vision towards one rooted in sovereign resilience and regional production.

With mounting pressure on public and private energy systems amid overlapping climate, geopolitical, and market challenges, it finds that energy resilience is now seen as a critical enabler of the clean energy transition – not a trade-off against it.

Matthias Rebellius, managing board member of Siemens AG and CEO of Smart Infrastructure, noted that the infrastructure transition is entering a new phase whereby national goals of energy security are overtaking global collaboration on decarbonisation.

“As systems face mounting climate and energy disruptions, resilience is no longer optional – AI, technology, and digitalisation are now critical to this shift. They can empower organisations and governments to manage the complexities of renewable-based systems, ensure reliability, and accelerate the clean energy transition smarter and more sustainably,” he said.

Over three in five (62 per cent) respondents believe future energy systems will rely more on local or regional production than global trade, with key enablers including renewable integration, storage readiness, and advanced grid systems.

Already, over half say resilience (53 per cent) and energy independence (52 per cent) are reaching maturity or are advanced within their countries – signalling a shift in infrastructure priorities is already underway.

With resilience and energy security now taking precedence, confidence in achieving global climate goals is starting to fall.

Accordingly, more than half (57 per cent) of global executives expect increased investment in fossil fuels over the next two years, and just 37 per cent of businesses now believe they will meet their 2030 decarbonisation targets – down from 44 per cent in 2023.

With confidence in climate goals declining and 2026 strategies in development, the report highlights that failure to embed resilience into energy planning risks both economic and environmental fallout.

At a time when governments are recalibrating their net-zero strategies alongside welfare and growth agendas, Siemens underscores that through grid investment and digital innovation, progress towards climate commitments as well as energy resilience can be accelerated.

As national energy strategies evolve, digital technologies remain at the heart of the infrastructure transition.

Digitalisation ranks as the second most important factor in accelerating the clean energy transition for industries – just behind expanding energy storage – with AI expected to have the greatest positive impact.

Respondents believe that AI is helping to make critical infrastructure more resilient (66 per cent) and report that their organisations are using AI to help decarbonise their operations (59 per cent).

The Siemens Infrastructure Transition Monitor 2025 edition is the second in the series and launches ahead of COP30, which is slated to take place from November 10 to 21 in Brazil.

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