At the Eurelectric Power Summit 2026 in Helsinki, Laurent had the opportunity to sit down with Catherine MacGregor, CEO of ENGIE and Vice President of Eurelectric, for a wide-ranging discussion on the key issues shaping Europe's energy future.

We began with the themes at the heart of Eurelectric’s agenda this year: security of supply, affordability, competitiveness, and the challenges and opportunities created by the rapid growth of data centres.

One of the most striking insights from our conversation was that Europe does not have an electrification technology problem — it has an electrification coordination problem. This was also the central conclusion of the report Power Couples: Enhancing Industrial Competitiveness through Electrification, launched by Eurelectric and Accenture at Power Summit 2026. The report finds that electrification projects rarely fail because technology is unavailable. Instead, they stall when power economics, grid access, infrastructure delivery, financing structures, and industrial investment timelines are not aligned.

The proposed solution is a new delivery model: “Power Couples”, bringing together industrial players, utilities, technology providers and capital partners to accelerate deployment at scale.

We also reflected on ENGIE’s remarkable transformation under Catherine’s leadership over the past five and a half years. The company’s strategy has been defined by two parallel moves: more than €15 billion of divestments from fossil and legacy assets, alongside concentrated investments in renewables, networks, batteries, and regulated infrastructure — all while maintaining strong financial discipline, with net debt-to-EBITDA around 3.

The results have been impressive. Since 2021, ENGIE has delivered the strongest risk-adjusted equity performance among major European utilities, combining substantial dividend distributions with significant share-price appreciation. With an annualised IRR of roughly 20.5% since January 2021, ENGIE has outperformed the net returns of many leading global infrastructure investors, effectively delivering private-equity-style returns with public-market liquidity.

Our discussion also covered ENGIE’s leadership in power purchase agreements (PPAs), its support for 24/7 Scope 2 accounting, the recent acquisition of UK Power Networks, progress in EV charging infrastructure, and its fully integrated strategy for data centre development.

Finally, we explored ENGIE’s investment plans for the years ahead and the broader structural shift underway across the energy system: the continued transition from molecules to electrons.

Eurelectric Report: Power Couples https://www.eurelectric.org/publications/industrial-electrification-power-couples/