Energy’s Digital-First Shift

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Tuesday, 12 August 2025

5 Mins

by Hardy Sidhu

For most of the last two decades, energy companies treated digital as a supporting function. Useful and necessary, but secondary to the “real” business of molecules, electrons, steel, and concrete.

That distinction no longer holds.

Across oil and gas majors, utilities, grid operators, and energy retailers, digital is increasingly the primary way the business is run. Assets are monitored through models before they are touched in the field. Customers interact with platforms rather than call centres. Partners integrate through APIs instead of contracts and spreadsheets.

In short, the digital representation of the energy system is becoming as important as the physical one.

This digital-first shift is not about apps or dashboards. It is about changing the operating logic of energy companies, and the benefits are showing up internally, externally, and across both B2B and B2C models.

From assets to algorithms: internal value creation

Energy is one of the most asset-intensive industries in the world, which is why the earliest and often largest returns from digital-first strategies show up inside the organisation first.

Companies like Shell, Equinor, and Chevron have been explicit about how data, analytics, and digital twins now sit at the heart of operational decision-making.

The logic is straightforward. If you can sense asset health in real time, model future behaviour, and intervene earlier, you reduce unplanned downtime, improve safety, and extend asset life. Maintenance shifts from being calendar-driven to risk-driven.

This change has meaningful implications. Instead of reacting to failures, teams operate ahead of them. Instead of siloed engineering knowledge, insight becomes shared, searchable, and embedded in daily workflows. Digital twins are no longer niche engineering tools. They are becoming collaboration layers for offshore crews, control rooms, and remote experts.

The less visible benefit is speed. Historically, energy organisations optimised for correctness and compliance, often at the expense of decision velocity. Digital-first approaches compress feedback loops. When operational data is trusted, accessible, and modelled consistently, decisions that once took weeks can happen in hours. In energy, that speed directly translates into safer operations and lower risk exposure.

There is also a workforce dimension. Field technicians equipped with mobile-first tools, remote assistance, and digital navigation systems are simply more productive. Knowledge that once lived in binders or in the heads of senior engineers becomes institutional memory, reducing dependency on scarce expertise.

Digital as an enabler of the energy transition

As energy companies push toward lower-carbon systems, digital-first strategies are proving to be less about ambition and more about execution.

Decarbonisation is, at its core, a measurement and optimisation challenge. You cannot manage what you cannot see. Whether it is emissions tracking, power flow optimisation, or integrating intermittent renewables into complex systems, digital infrastructure underpins credible transition plans.

Grid operators like National Grid increasingly rely on system-level digital models to plan resilience, manage demand volatility, and stress-test future scenarios. These tools are not abstract simulations. They inform real investment decisions and operational trade-offs.

Digital-first, in this sense, becomes a prerequisite for running a more complex, decentralised, and electrified energy system.

The customer-facing payoff: clarity, control, and trust

Externally, the most visible impact of digital-first strategies shows up in customer experience, but the real benefit is structural.

Retail energy has long struggled with high cost-to-serve, low trust, and limited differentiation. Digital-first companies are addressing all three at once.

Utilities such as EDF and E.ON have leaned into app-based self-service. Meter readings, usage tracking, payments, and forecasting are delivered through simple interfaces. Every successful digital interaction reduces friction for customers and removes cost from the system.

More importantly, digital-first models replace opacity with visibility. Usage trends, predicted bills, and proactive notifications turn energy from a black box into something customers can understand and plan around. In a sector where trust is fragile, that transparency becomes a competitive advantage.

Smart meters amplify this shift. Companies like Enel frame smart metering not just as infrastructure, but as a platform for more conscious energy use. This unlocks personalised insights, time-of-use tariffs, EV charging optimisation, and home energy management.

The pattern is consistent. Digital-first B2C energy is less about flashy features and more about giving customers control while quietly lowering operational costs.

B2B energy is becoming platform-led

While B2C receives most of the attention, some of the most strategic digital-first benefits are emerging on the B2B side.

Industrial customers, EV fleets, developers, and energy partners increasingly expect energy companies to behave like technology platforms. They want predictable interfaces, real-time data, and seamless integration. This is pushing energy firms toward API-first architectures and reusable digital capabilities that serve multiple customer types at once.

Companies such as TotalEnergies have focused on expanding access to high-quality industrial data to accelerate analytics and AI adoption across the organisation. The result is faster project delivery, better uptime, and more reliable service-level commitments for B2B customers.

The most effective digital-first strategies do not separate B2B and B2C technology stacks. Identity, consent, metering data, forecasting, and orchestration capabilities increasingly power both. Only the user experience changes.

When energy companies start to look like software companies

Perhaps the clearest signal of digital-first maturity is when digital capabilities themselves become valuable products.

The rise of Octopus Energy and its Kraken platform illustrates this shift. What began as an internal operating system for retail energy has evolved into a licensed platform running tens of millions of customer accounts globally. Energy, in this model, is delivered through software first and infrastructure second.

This is not an isolated case. It is a preview. As digital-first loops compound, energy companies begin to benefit from reinforcing dynamics. Better data enables better automation. Automation improves customer experience. Stronger experience lowers cost-to-serve and improves retention. Broader ecosystems generate more data and new revenue opportunities.

At that point, digital is no longer a transformation programme. It becomes the economic engine.

Digital-first is no longer optional

The most important shift is philosophical. Digital-first energy companies no longer ask how to digitise an existing process. They ask how the business should work if software were the starting point.

That mindset changes everything. It reshapes how assets are maintained, how customers are served, and how new business models are launched.

In an industry facing pressure from the energy transition, rising customer expectations, and increasing system complexity, digital-first is no longer an innovation advantage. It is quickly becoming the minimum requirement to compete.

The energy companies that recognise this are not simply becoming more efficient. They are redefining what an energy company is.