Evidence, uncertainty and investment lessons from the Future of Energy Summit
One clear message cut through at this year’s Future of Energy Summit in Amsterdam: global geopolitics, and the need for national energy security, are now key drivers of the clean energy transition. What was once largely perceived as a climate challenge is now increasingly reframed as an opportunity for security, sovereignty and independence.
For governments, development partners and investors, this shift raises critical questions about what works, where and why – questions that need to guide strategies, investment decisions and governance approaches. Answering them requires robust evidence, offering both breadth and depth of insight across volatile contexts, financial mechanisms and rapidly evolving technologies.
This blog brings together three themes from the conference that resonated with our work in evidence and learning – and highlights how it can facilitate a more effective energy transition.
1. A volatility-driven energy transition
Discussions at the Summit highlighted how the drivers of the energy transition are shifting. Responses to ongoing fuel disruptions in Asia are a stark example: a declaration of national energy emergency in the Philippines, cooking gas rationing in Nepal, industrial disruption in Thailand, and ongoing conversations about grounding flights across the region. Closer to home, these ripple effects are also pushing Europe to revisit assumptions about security and supply resilience.
This points not only to volatility, but it’s deeply political nature. Short‑term shocks are reshaping long‑term planning priorities; and clean energy is being reframed as a question of sovereignty and resilience rather than a climate imperative alone.
In this context, the pace and direction of change increasingly depend on institutions’ ability to learn, adapt and coordinate under pressure. If governments, investors and development partners are to make sound decisions in this environment, they need real‑time evidence that reflects the reality of volatile systems, analysis that connects political economy with technical change, and learning processes that help institutions course‑correct as conditions shift. The Summit reinforced just how essential evidence and learning are becoming.
2. De-risking investment to enable scale
Investment approaches focussed on de-risking clean energy projects were among the most substantive threads of the Summit. Despite the volume of capital available, fund managers, development finance institutions (DFIs) and policymakers all echoed the same concern: investable project pipelines aren’t emerging at the scale required.
Three insights stood out:
- Investability is determined upstream, long before capital arrives. Projects often fail months or years before financing decisions are made because early‑stage work is under‑resourced. Speakers emphasised the impact of weak baselines and modelling, limited environmental, social, and governance (ESG) capacity, and project preparation gaps that delay or derail investment. These early stages of development are where value – and risk – are truly created.
- Blended finance structures are too complex, too early. Fund managers and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) were strikingly aligned on this point. Over‑engineered structures can deter private investors that are unfamiliar with specific markets. Simplicity is often the catalyst for confidence, and early‑stage concessional support is most effective when it tackles a small number of clearly defined risks rather than trying to solve everything at once. Several speakers also stressed that “one‑off” mechanisms do not scale – investors need replicable models, not bespoke vehicles.
- Local currency and local context remain major gaps. Despite progress, most financing continues to be offered in US dollars or Euros, transferring foreign exchange risk onto local developers and undermining long-term sustainability. At the same time, fragmented regulatory environments and inconsistent permitting processes continue to slow project lifecycles.
Together, these insights point to the need for deeper and more strategic evidence – on project‑preparation ecosystems, on the behaviour of blended structures in practice, and on where and why pipelines fail. Moving beyond monitoring to engagement with learning-oriented evidence can strengthen investability, improve capital allocation and support the rapid scaling of clean technologies.
3. AI–Energy interdependence
Discussions of AI in energy focused on the rapidly growing energy demand of data centres. The message was crystal clear: AI is becoming one the world’s most energy‑intensive technologies, and many countries are unprepared for the scale and demand ahead.
Speakers indicated that hyperscale data centres may require hundreds of megawatts each, with some approaching gigawatt‑scale demand. Many emerging economies currently lack the clean, reliable power required to sustainably support AI-driven growth; and transmission, rather than generation, may become the primary bottleneck. Without sufficient sovereign energy capacity, countries risk dependence on foreign AI stacks, with implications for education, industry, governance, and more.
These challenges go far beyond infrastructure. They raise questions about national energy planning, digital and data governance, industrial strategy, security and autonomy, and risk management for both public and private sector organisations involved in financing and developing AI and energy infrastructure.
This is a frontier space where clear thinking is limited and evidence needs are growing quickly. There is an urgent need to understand how AI and energy systems interact; how risks can be governed; how energy transitions can anticipate – rather than react to – AI‑driven demand; and where vulnerabilities and inequalities might emerge.
Turning up the energy on evidence
Across these themes, the Summit reinforced three areas where evidence and learning can make a distinct contribution:
- Strong evidence and learning systems can help governments, donors and multilaterals to navigate complexity, manage uncertainty and adapt strategies in real time. This is already core to Itad’s systems-level work, from adaptive management to complexity‑aware monitoring, evaluation and learning.
- Rigorous analysis and evaluative insight can strengthen how projects are designed, de‑risked and brought to scale, informing smarter blended finance and better upstream preparation.
- Evidence-informed context analysis and scenario planning can support institutions to understand emerging risks, anticipate future demand, and adapt to technologies that will reshape the energy transition. This includes maintaining pace with the AI revolution, its energy demands and its societal implications.
These are not peripheral issues, but central to how the clean energy transition unfolds. Discussions at the Future of Energy Summit made it clear that combining evidence, systems thinking and strategic learning remains critical for enabling decision‑makers to act boldly in an increasingly uncertain landscape.
