Industrial Electrification Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Sophie Winslow, Industrial Technology | Last updated: September 18, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Only 7.7% of the energy used for process heating in US manufacturing came from electricity in 2022, the most recent census year, even though electricity supplies 29.3% of total manufacturing fuel. According to Axis Intelligence Research, that gap is the entire industrial electrification opportunity, and it is priced by one number: the Electrification Parity Threshold.
Quick Answer
Industrial electrification in 2026 is a story of two very different machines. Motors are already electric: machine drive takes 51.9% of all electricity used in US manufacturing. Furnaces are not: process heating takes 8.3% of manufacturing electricity and still runs on 2,946 trillion Btu of natural gas against 265 trillion Btu of electricity, a 7.7% electrified share. According to Axis Intelligence Research, the Electrification Parity Threshold (EPT) for US industry fell to 4.00 in 2025 and 3.51 in the first five months of 2026, down from 4.85 in 2024. In the European Union the EPT was 2.43 in the second half of 2025. EPT is the coefficient of performance an electric heat system must deliver to match the running cost of an existing gas boiler. The lower the reading, the easier the retrofit case, and on this measure European industry faces a threshold roughly 39% below the American one.
Key Findings
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, electricity supplied 7.7% of process-heating energy in US manufacturing in 2022, versus 29.3% of total manufacturing fuel consumption, based on EIA Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey Table 5.4.
- The Axis Electrification Parity Threshold for US industry fell from 4.85 in 2024 to 4.00 in 2025 and 3.51 over January to May 2026, as delivered industrial gas prices rose 28.5% while industrial electricity prices rose 6.0%.
- The EU Electrification Parity Threshold stood at 2.43 in the second half of 2025, roughly 39% lower than the US threshold, because EU non-household gas costs EUR 6.05 per 100 kWh against electricity at EUR 18.37 per 100 kWh.
- Electric arc furnaces produced 30.3% of the world’s 1,848.9 million tonnes of crude steel in 2025, but the spread runs from 95.5% in the Middle East and 71.3% in the United States to 10.6% in China, according to World Steel in Figures 2026.
- Global electricity demand is forecast to rise from 28,200 TWh in 2025 to 33,600 TWh in 2030, an addition of 5,400 TWh, with industry among the main drivers and the electricity share of total final consumption climbing from 21% to 24%.
How Electrified Is Industry in 2026?
Electrification is usually reported as a single national percentage, which hides the part that matters to a plant manager. The useful split is between the loads that already run on electrons and the loads that still burn molecules.
At the economy level, the International Energy Agency’s Electricity 2026 demand analysis puts the share of electricity in total final consumption at 21% in 2025, rising to 24% by 2030. China has moved furthest and fastest: its electrification share doubled since 2005 and passed 27% in 2025, while the United States, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand have stagnated just above 20%, and Japan sits between 25% and 30%.
| Economy | Electricity share of total final consumption | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| World | 21% | 2025 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| World (forecast) | 24% | 2030 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| China | Above 27% | 2025 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| Japan | 25% to 30% | 2025 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| United States | Just above 20% | 2025 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| European Union | Just above 20% | 2025 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
Inside manufacturing, the picture is sharper. The US Energy Information Administration’s 2022 Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey end-use table reports net demand for electricity of 3,182 trillion Btu across all manufacturing industries, against 7,087 trillion Btu of natural gas, 398 of coal, 85 of hydrocarbon gas liquids, 13 of residual fuel oil and 79 of distillate fuel oil. Electricity therefore carries 29.3% of manufacturing fuel. The same table breaks that electricity down by end use, and the breakdown is where the analysis starts.
| Electricity end use, US manufacturing | Trillion Btu | Share of manufacturing electricity | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Machine drive | 1,652 | 51.9% | EIA MECS 2022, Table 5.4 |
| Facility HVAC | 298 | 9.4% | EIA MECS 2022, Table 5.4 |
| Process heating | 265 | 8.3% | EIA MECS 2022, Table 5.4 |
| Process cooling and refrigeration | 250 | 7.9% | EIA MECS 2022, Table 5.4 |
| Electro-chemical processes | 212 | 6.7% | EIA MECS 2022, Table 5.4 |
| Facility lighting | 184 | 5.8% | EIA MECS 2022, Table 5.4 |
Sophie Winslow, Axis Intelligence Research: Half of every industrial electron already turns a shaft. Pumps, fans, compressors, conveyors and machine tools were electrified generations ago, and the remaining work there is variable-speed drives and better system design, not fuel switching. The unelectrified half of the plant is thermal, and thermal is where the capital, the permitting queue and the argument live. Any electrification statistic that reports a single plant-wide percentage is averaging a solved problem with an unsolved one.
What Is the Electrification Parity Threshold (EPT)?
Axis Intelligence Research built the Electrification Parity Threshold (EPT) because the usual comparison, cents per kilowatt-hour against dollars per thousand cubic feet, tells an engineer nothing about whether to buy a heat pump. EPT converts both fuels to delivered heat and states the answer as the single specification a buyer actually shops for: coefficient of performance.
EPT = (electricity price per MMBtu) ÷ (industrial gas price per MMBtu ÷ boiler efficiency)
The inputs are the volume-weighted national average prices published in the EIA Monthly Energy Review, Section 9, Tables 9.8 and 9.10. Electricity converts at 3.412142 MMBtu per MWh. Gas converts at 1.036 MMBtu per Mcf. Boiler efficiency is held at 0.80, the conventional steady-state figure for an installed industrial gas boiler including distribution losses. A reading of 4.00 means an electric heat system must produce four units of useful heat per unit of electricity to match the gas bill. Below the reading, electrification wins on running cost before any carbon price, incentive or maintenance saving is counted.
| Period | Industrial electricity | Industrial gas | Electricity $/MMBtu | Delivered gas heat $/MMBtu | EPT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 average | 8.13 cents/kWh | $4.07/Mcf | $23.83 | $4.91 | 4.85 |
| 2025 average | 8.62 cents/kWh | $5.23/Mcf | $25.26 | $6.31 | 4.00 |
| 2026, Jan to May | 8.83 cents/kWh | $6.11/Mcf | $25.88 | $7.37 | 3.51 |
| EU, H2 2025 | EUR 18.37/100 kWh | EUR 6.05/100 kWh | n/a | n/a | 2.43 |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research calculation from EIA Monthly Energy Review August 2026, Tables 9.8 and 9.10; Eurostat non-household electricity and gas price releases for the second half of 2025.
The EU reading uses Eurostat’s non-household electricity price for the second half of 2025, EUR 18.37 per 100 kWh in the 500 to 2,000 MWh band, and Eurostat’s non-household gas price, EUR 6.05 per 100 kWh in the 10,000 to 100,000 GJ band, down 8.3% from the first half of 2025. The two bands are not the same size of buyer, which is stated here rather than smoothed away.
Sophie Winslow, Axis Intelligence Research: The received wisdom is that Europe cannot electrify because European power is expensive. The arithmetic says the opposite. European power is expensive and European gas is more expensive still, so the ratio that governs a retrofit decision is far friendlier there than in Texas or Louisiana. A threshold of 2.43 and a threshold of 4.85, which is where the United States sat in 2024, describe two different equipment markets rather than two different attitudes to decarbonisation. The US reading fell by 1.34 points in twenty months, and none of that move came from cheaper electricity. It came from gas repricing. The electrification case in America is currently being made by the LNG export terminals, not by the incentive programs.
How Much US Process Heat Is Already Electric, by Industry?
This is the breakdown almost nobody publishes, because it requires reading MECS end-use rows rather than headline totals. Axis Intelligence Research computed the electrified share of process heat for each subsector as electricity divided by the sum of all reported process-heating energy sources in Table 5.4.
| NAICS subsector | Electric (TBtu) | Natural gas (TBtu) | Coal (TBtu) | Electrified share of process heat | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computer and electronic products (334) | 6 | 5 | 0 | 54.5% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Plastics and rubber products (326) | 21 | 27 | 0 | 43.8% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Foundries (3315) | 13 | 25 | 0 | 34.2% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Transportation equipment (336) | 12 | 50 | 0 | 19.4% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Primary metals (331) | 84 | 452 | n/a | 15.7% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Iron and steel mills (331110) | 55 | 293 | 5 | 15.6% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Fabricated metal products (332) | 22 | 175 | 0 | 11.2% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Paper (322) | 14 | 147 | 0 | 8.7% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| All manufacturing | 265 | 2,946 | 205 | 7.7% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Food (311) | 14 | 172 | 6 | 7.3% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Nonmetallic mineral products (327) | 39 | 350 | 191 | 6.7% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Alumina and aluminum (3313) | 4 | 89 | 0 | 4.3% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Chemicals (325) | 23 | 771 | 2 | 2.9% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Cement (327310) | 4 | 84 | 121 | 1.9% | EIA MECS 2022 |
| Petroleum refineries (324110) | 6 | 574 | 0 | 1.0% | EIA MECS 2022 |
Shares are Axis Intelligence Research calculations over the six energy sources reported in MECS Table 5.4. Minor sources suppressed by EIA as below 0.5 trillion Btu are treated as zero, which moves no subsector share by more than half a point.
According to Axis Intelligence Research, three patterns fall out of this table. First, electrification tracks temperature and product value, not sector ambition: semiconductors and plastics heat to low and moderate temperatures with tight tolerances, and they electrified without a policy program. Second, the biggest thermal loads are the least electrified, and refineries at 1.0% and cement at 1.9% are effectively untouched. Third, the food sector, which is widely described as the easy win because most of its heat is below 150 Celsius, is still at 7.3%. That last number is the one worth arguing about.
Sophie Winslow, Axis Intelligence Research: Food processing is the counter-example to the idea that technology readiness drives electrification. The technology has been ready for a decade. What has not been ready is the interconnection queue and the capital committee. A dairy plant weighing a 20-year boiler replacement against a heat pump plus a service upgrade is not solving a thermodynamics problem, it is solving a queue problem and a rate-structure problem. Measured against a 2022 baseline over a 2026 price deck, the food sector is the segment where the EPT has moved most and the installed base has moved least.
How Electrified Is Steelmaking, by Country?
Steel is the one heavy industry where electrification can be measured in tonnes rather than terajoules, because the electric arc furnace route is counted directly. World Steel in Figures 2026 reports that 30.3% of the 1,848.9 million tonnes of crude steel produced in 2025 came from electric furnaces, against 69.4% from the oxygen route.
| Country or region | Crude steel 2025 (Mt) | Electric route share | Oxygen route share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Middle East | 57.3 | 95.5% | 4.5% | worldsteel 2026 |
| Africa | 29.8 | 89.0% | 11.0% | worldsteel 2026 |
| Türkiye | 38.1 | 72.2% | 27.8% | worldsteel 2026 |
| North America | 107.4 | 71.7% | 28.3% | worldsteel 2026 |
| United States | 81.9 | 71.3% | 28.7% | worldsteel 2026 |
| India | 164.9 | 57.7% | 42.3% | worldsteel 2026 |
| European Union (27) | 126.0 | 45.8% | 54.2% | worldsteel 2026 |
| South Korea | 62.2 | 27.0% | 73.0% | worldsteel 2026 |
| Japan | 80.7 | 25.8% | 74.2% | worldsteel 2026 |
| China | 960.8 | 10.6% | 89.4% | worldsteel 2026 |
| World | 1,848.9 | 30.3% | 69.4% | worldsteel 2026 |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, China’s 960.8 million tonnes at a 10.6% electric share represents about 102 million tonnes of electric-route output, while the United States produces roughly 58 million tonnes of electric steel from a base less than a tenth the size. Within the EU the spread is wider than the average implies: Italy runs at 90.1% electric, Spain at 71.7%, Poland at 55.0%, Germany at 30.6%, and the Netherlands at zero.
Sophie Winslow, Axis Intelligence Research: Scrap availability, not climate policy, wrote most of this table. The Middle East and North America built electric fleets because they had scrap, cheap power or gas-based direct reduced iron and no legacy integrated capacity to defend. China built oxygen furnaces because it was building the scrap pool rather than drawing on it, and a scrap pool takes a construction cycle to mature. The number to watch is not China’s EAF share this year but its scrap consumption trend, because that is the leading indicator that turns before the furnace mix does.
How Much Investment Is Going Into Electrification?
The IEA World Energy Investment 2026 report puts global energy investment at USD 3.4 trillion in 2026, a 5% rise on 2025, with about USD 2.2 trillion going to renewables, nuclear, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency and electrification, and USD 1.2 trillion to oil, gas and coal. Electricity supply and infrastructure alone reaches USD 1.6 trillion, rising to USD 2 trillion when end-use electrification is included.
| Investment category, 2026 estimate | USD | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total global energy investment | 3.4 trillion | IEA World Energy Investment 2026 |
| Clean energy, efficiency and electrification | 2.2 trillion | IEA World Energy Investment 2026 |
| Electricity supply and infrastructure | 1.6 trillion | IEA World Energy Investment 2026 |
| Electricity including end-use electrification | 2.0 trillion | IEA World Energy Investment 2026 |
| Implied end-use electrification spend | ~0.4 trillion | Axis Intelligence Research calculation |
| Grid investment | ~0.55 trillion | IEA World Energy Investment 2026 |
The implied end-use electrification figure is a subtraction of two IEA aggregates, stated here as an estimate rather than an observation, and it covers vehicles, heat pumps and industrial equipment together rather than industry alone.
According to Axis Intelligence Research, grids deserve their own line in any industrial electrification business case. Grid spending approaching USD 550 billion in 2026, up nearly 20% year on year, is being driven by transformer and cable costs as much as by volume, and those are the same components a plant needs for a service upgrade. The lead time on a large transformer is now part of the payback calculation, which is a sentence nobody wrote in 2019.
Where Is Industrial Electricity Demand Growing Fastest?
Global electricity demand grew 3% in 2025 after 4.4% in 2024, and the IEA forecasts an average 3.6% a year through 2030, adding roughly 1,100 TWh annually against 700 TWh a year over 2015 to 2025. Industry’s contribution differs sharply by region.
| Region | Industrial electricity demand signal | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | Industry accounted for half of total electricity demand gains | 2021 to 2025 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| India | Industry accounted for 36% of demand growth; about one third of growth to 2030 | 2021 to 2025 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| European Union | Industrial demand fell about 6% in each of 2022 and 2023, rose close to 2% in 2024, broadly flat in 2025 | 2022 to 2025 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| European Union | About 50 TWh of industrial demand growth forecast | 2026 to 2030 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
| United States | Industry a major growth driver via reshoring, semiconductor and battery plants | 2026 to 2030 | IEA Electricity 2026 |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the EU line is the uncomfortable one. Industrial electricity consumption there fell about 6% in both 2022 and 2023 as energy-intensive production contracted, recovered by roughly 2% in 2024, and stayed broadly flat in 2025. Europe has the best parity economics in this dataset and the weakest industrial load growth, because a favourable price ratio does not help a furnace that has been shut down.
Sophie Winslow, Axis Intelligence Research: Two mechanisms produce rising industrial electricity demand and they should never be reported as one number. Fuel switching raises electricity use at constant output. New electro-intensive capacity, a fab or a cell plant, raises it by adding output. The United States is mostly doing the second, and the same reshoring wave that is building cell plants for electric vehicles is building the load; Europe is doing neither at scale, and China is doing both inside a slowing industrial base. Anyone modelling grid load from an electrification percentage without separating those two is going to miss by the width of a substation.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure in this dataset was retrieved from the issuing organisation between September 15 and September 17, 2026. Sources are the EIA Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey 2022 release (Table 5.4, released August 2025), the EIA Monthly Energy Review August 2026 (Tables 9.8 and 9.10), IEA Electricity 2026, IEA World Energy Investment 2026, World Steel in Figures 2026, and the Eurostat non-household electricity and gas price releases of May 8, 2026. No figure is carried from secondary compilations.
EPT formula. EPT = electricity price per MMBtu ÷ (gas price per MMBtu ÷ boiler efficiency), with electricity at 3.412142 MMBtu/MWh, gas at 1.036 MMBtu/Mcf, and boiler efficiency fixed at 0.80. Holding efficiency constant is deliberate: it isolates price movement, which is what changes between readings. A plant with a 0.85-efficiency boiler should raise the threshold by about 6%; a plant with a 0.70-efficiency boiler should lower it by about 13%.
Process-heat shares. Computed as electricity divided by the sum of the six energy sources reported for process heating in MECS Table 5.4 (net demand for electricity, residual fuel oil, distillate fuel oil and diesel, natural gas, hydrocarbon gas liquids, and coal excluding coal coke and breeze). Values EIA marks as below 0.5 trillion Btu are treated as zero. Values withheld for disclosure or relative standard error are excluded from both numerator and denominator, which affects machine-drive rows in primary metals but not the process-heating rows used here.
Scope of the EU comparison. Eurostat’s non-household electricity band (500 to 2,000 MWh per year) and gas band (10,000 to 100,000 GJ per year) describe mid-sized industrial buyers, while the EIA figures are national volume-weighted averages across the whole industrial sector. The two EPT readings are therefore directionally comparable rather than identical in construction, and the gap between 4.00 and 2.43 is far larger than any plausible band effect.
Currency and dates. No currency conversion is applied anywhere in this dataset. US EPT readings are in USD, the EU reading in EUR, and each is internally consistent because EPT is a ratio.
About This Dataset
industrial-electrification-statistics-2026.csv contains 178 observations covering process-heat electrification by NAICS subsector, EPT readings, steel production by process and country, investment aggregates and regional demand signals. Each row carries value, unit, as-of date, source organisation, source document, source URL, retrieval date, primary-source flag, Axis-calculated flag and a method note.
Licensed CC BY 4.0. Cite as: Axis Intelligence Research, Industrial Electrification Statistics 2026, 2026.
APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). Industrial electrification statistics 2026: Process heat, parity economics, investment and adoption by sector. https://axis-intelligence.com/industrial-electrification-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “Industrial Electrification Statistics 2026: Process Heat, Parity Economics, Investment and Adoption by Sector.” Axis Intelligence, 18 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/industrial-electrification-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “Industrial Electrification Statistics 2026: Process Heat, Parity Economics, Investment and Adoption by Sector.” Axis Intelligence, September 18, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/industrial-electrification-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
What coefficient of performance does an industrial heat pump need to beat gas in 2026?
In the United States it needs 3.51 at prices averaged over January to May 2026, and it needed 4.00 on 2025 full-year prices. In the European Union it needed 2.43 in the second half of 2025. These are the Axis Electrification Parity Threshold readings, calculated on delivered heat with an 80% reference boiler efficiency.
Why did US industrial electrification economics improve without electricity getting cheaper?
Because delivered gas heat repriced faster. Industrial gas rose from $4.07 to $5.23 per thousand cubic feet between the 2024 and 2025 annual averages and reached $6.11 over January to May 2026, while industrial electricity moved from 8.13 to 8.62 to 8.83 cents per kilowatt-hour. The parity threshold is a ratio, and the denominator moved.
Which manufacturing subsector has the least electrified process heat?
Petroleum refineries, at 1.0% electric process heat in 2022, followed by cement at 1.9% and chemicals at 2.9%. Refinery and cement heat sits at temperatures and scales where electric equivalents are either precommercial or require a plant rebuild rather than a retrofit.
Is machine drive already electrified, and does it still matter?
It is essentially fully electrified and it still matters, because machine drive takes 51.9% of all electricity consumed in US manufacturing. Efficiency gains there come from variable-speed drives, compressed-air system repair and pump sizing, which change the load shape a plant presents to the grid and therefore change what a service upgrade for thermal electrification will cost.
How much of the world’s steel is made in electric furnaces?
30.3% of 1,848.9 million tonnes in 2025. The route share ranges from 95.5% in the Middle East and 71.3% in the United States to 10.6% in China, and within the EU from 90.1% in Italy to zero in the Netherlands.
Does an electric arc furnace make steel low-carbon?
Not by itself. It shifts emissions from the furnace to the grid and to the feedstock. worldsteel reports average scrap-based electric route intensity at 0.69 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of crude steel against 2.34 for the blast furnace and oxygen route, and 1.47 for the direct-reduced-iron electric route, based on 2024 activity data. Feedstock and power mix decide where a given plant lands in that range.
What does grid connection cost do to an electrification payback?
It can dominate it. Grid investment is set to approach USD 550 billion globally in 2026, up nearly 20% year on year, with transformer and cable costs a principal driver. For a plant, that translates into both the capital cost of a service upgrade and the lead time on the equipment, which is why a favourable parity threshold does not automatically produce a signed purchase order.
Which regions are actually adding industrial electricity load?
China, where industry drove half of all electricity demand gains over the past five years, and India, where industry accounted for 36% of growth from 2021 to 2025 and is expected to supply about a third of growth to 2030. EU industrial demand is forecast to add only about 50 TWh through 2030 after falling roughly 6% in each of 2022 and 2023.
What would move the Electrification Parity Threshold below 3 in the United States?
Two paths, both computable from the formula. Holding the January to May 2026 electricity price at 8.83 cents, industrial gas at $7.15 per thousand cubic feet produces a threshold of 3.00; holding 2025 gas prices, industrial electricity at 6.46 cents per kilowatt-hour produces the same result.