CERAWeek 2026: Mitsubishi Power CEOs on Demand Growth, Reliability, and What’s Ahead

CERAWeek 2026 convenes the global energy industry at a moment when ambition and constraint are colliding. Demand growth is accelerating, grids are becoming more complex, and decarbonization expectations remain high. This year’s theme, “Convergence,” is apt: technological, economic, and geopolitical trends can no longer be addressed separately. They must be taken together.

Demand growth is rising, driven by electrification, industrial expansion, and AI. Renewable penetration continues to increase, adding complexity to grid operations. Expectations around affordability and emissions performance remain high. And rising geopolitical instability is adding to uncertainty. Across regions, the drivers may differ, but the constraint is the same: reliable capacity must expand fast enough to sustain economic growth while enabling cleaner energy systems.

At Mitsubishi Power, our global vision is clear: enabling the decarbonization of energy while delivering reliable power everywhere. How that vision is realized, however, differs across regions. Each market has its own drivers, pressures, and pace.

Against this backdrop, CERAWeek serves as a focal point for how these forces are being debated, aligned, and translated into action. Leaders across the energy ecosystem are not only addressing demand growth and grid reliability, but also navigating the broader forces shaping the industry, from shifting geopolitical and economic pressures to evolving trade dynamics and supply chain constraints. 

Conversations this year also center on how companies are adapting business strategies, managing emissions with practical pathways, and integrating AI and digital tools into increasingly complex power systems. For Mitsubishi Power’s regional CEOs, attending CERAWeek is an opportunity to engage directly in these discussions, share our leadership perspectives, and bring back insights that inform how we support our customers in real time.
 

The Mitsubishi Power EMEA Story: Ensuring Energy Security for the Future 

Javier Cavada, President & CEO, Mitsubishi Power EMEA

EMEA is one of the most diverse energy regions in the world. Each market across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa faces unique challenges which presents unique opportunities. Two forces are consistently shaping the region: rising electricity demand and the growing importance of energy security.

In the Middle East, electricity demand is projected to increase significantly over the next decade, driven by industrialization, urbanization and economic diversification, the IEA forecasts that electricity demand in the Middle East and North Africa will rise by up to 50% by 2035. In Europe, the electrification of transport and heating, along with rising demand from AI and data centers, continues to expand load even as renewable penetration grows quickly.

Taken together, this means securing electricity supply to meet this demand and building a robust and flexible energy system to deliver it, are crucial. Recent geopolitical instability in the Middle East and disruption to energy markets and energy infrastructure has only served to reinforce this point. The resilience of supply chains, generation assets, and grid systems has moved to the center of the conversation.

Gas turbines have a key role to play here. As renewables scale across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the system flexibility needed to integrate different sources and deliver reliable and consistent power becomes increasingly critical. In this context, high-efficiency gas turbines are not positioned against renewables – they are an enabler of them, providing dispatchable generation and essential ancillary services when variability rises in energy systems with high levels of renewable penetration.

“In EMEA, the question isn’t renewables or thermal – it’s how we integrate them intelligently to protect energy security and industrial competitiveness.”

As Mitsubishi Power, we deliver this integration in practice. In Qatar, we are delivering M701JAC turbines to the Facility E Independent Water and Power Project, which will supply approximately 20% of national grid capacity while supporting desalinated water production. In the UK, our recent upgrade at the Damhead Creek power station will strengthen reliability in the UK’s renewable-intensive system by extending the life and enhancing the performance of the GTCC at this critically important power station.

The challenge is not simply adding capacity, it is building resilient systems capable of withstanding volatility while advancing decarbonization strategy. In this context, technologies that combine reliability, flexibility and efficiency – like our own advanced gas turbines – will be essential to ensuring the energy transition strengthens rather than compromises EMEA’s long-term energy security.
 

The Mitsubishi Power APAC Story: Growth with a Path to Decarbonization

Akihiro Ondo, Managing Director & CEO, Mitsubishi Power APAC

Rising electricity demand growth is a global story, and Asia-Pacific is no exception. Regional consumption is projected to rise nearly 50% this decade.

In many countries across the region, electricity consumption rises alongside economic development and living standards. Population expansion and industrialization remain powerful drivers, while digital infrastructure and data centers are adding new layers of demand. To meet this demand, many countries are expanding and rethinking energy systems, not just optimizing existing infrastructure.

Amid this growth, governments across APAC have also established decarbonization targets, and climate impacts are becoming increasingly visible. But starting points also differ across markets. In many, coal still plays a major role in the energy mix, and the transition therefore begins from a different baseline than in Europe or the U.S. These dynamics make the energy transition in Asia-Pacific complex. The shift from coal to gas and renewables, and ultimately to net zero, is not a simple one, and the path forward must be realistic and multi-faceted.

What is clear is that reliability and development cannot pause while long-term solutions are refined. Economic expansion, urban growth, and industrial competitiveness demand immediate capacity. As a result, transition in APAC is advancing on multiple fronts: upgrading legacy thermal assets, deploying new high-efficiency gas turbines to anchor expanding renewables, and preparing infrastructure for lower-carbon fuels as economics and policy mature.

“In Asia-Pacific, the transition cannot come at the expense of growth. Reliability and progress must move together.”

This pragmatic approach is already visible across the region. In Vietnam, the O Mon power cluster converted O Mon 1 from oil to gas while developing O Mon 4 as a high-efficiency combined-cycle plant. In Singapore, the Meranti Open Cycle Gas Turbine plant provides fast-start support during peak demand – a critical capability in a dense, digitally intensive market. Across partnerships with Malakoff in Malaysia and PacificLight in Singapore, hydrogen-ready JAC turbines ensure that infrastructure built today can evolve as tomorrow’s lower-carbon fuels become commercially viable.

These projects illustrate how natural gas and advanced gas-turbine technologies are helping countries move away from higher-emission coal assets while supporting the growth of renewables. Rather than serving as a temporary stopgap, they are becoming a practical and necessary part of the transition – enabling reliable power today while preparing systems to incorporate lower-carbon fuels such as hydrogen in the future. Combined with progress across other solutions, they help the region meet rising demand, strengthen energy security, and steadily reduce emissions.
 

The Mitsubishi Power Americas Story: Powering the New Economy

Bill Newsom, President & CEO, Mitsubishi Power Americas

In the Americas, electricity demand has shifted from cyclical to structural. Heavy-duty gas turbine demand has increased more than sixfold in five years – from 6.1 GW in 2020 to nearly 40 GW in 2025, according to McCoy Power Reports. Roughly 45% of that growth is driven by hyperscale data centers, with the remainder reflecting reshoring and electrification.

After decades of relatively flat demand growth, utilities are now planning for sustained expansion, with a focus on speed to power combined with the resilience needed to ensure stability.

Listening to customers, they’re not asking about capacity five or 10 years from now; they’re asking about in-service dates. Speed to power and certainty of delivery are what matters now. In this market, those are just table stakes.

Lead times have extended significantly as demand outpaces manufacturing capacity. That imbalance has forced discipline across the system, expanding production, strengthening supply chains, investing in workforce development, and increasing standardization so projects can be replicated efficiently rather than reinvented every time.

“This is not a debate about technology. It’s a test of execution – can we deliver reliable power at the speed the economy now requires?”

At the same time, pragmatism has set in.

Renewables are a critical part of the energy mix and will continue to scale. But they cannot serve 24/7 baseload demand. Dispatchable generation is required to support AI infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and electrification. The focus right now is delivering reliable electrons as quickly as possible.

Many hyperscalers understand this dynamic. From an energy perspective, winning the AI race isn’t about a single breakthrough. It’s about reliability, security, disciplined execution and partnership, and delivering power at the speed the economy now requires.

That doesn’t mean abandoning decarbonization. It means sequencing it. Investments by tech companies in particular are creating a strong market-driven force to decarbonize a large share of future growth in energy generation. We are advancing carbon-capture integration and hydrogen blending pathways, and we’ve demonstrated meaningful hydrogen co-firing capability. The approach is straightforward: build the capacity the economy needs now, and continue improving the emissions profile of those assets over time.

Convergence Requires Discipline

Across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas, the drivers differ. Demand profiles vary. Regulatory frameworks are distinct. Security dynamics are not uniform. Yet at CERAWeek 2026, one message connects these regional stories: ambition must be matched with execution.

Reliability today means responding in seconds to digital volatility, in hours to renewable variability, in seasons to extreme weather, and over decades to policy and market evolution. In a world defined by convergence, what customers value most is a partner who can deliver reliable, flexible power in practice, not just in principle.

At Mitsubishi Power, our mission is global. Our execution is regional. And our commitment to customers and the industry remains the same: deliver at speed, at scale, and with pragmatism.