Energy Flexibility Is Hot – But C&I Adoption Is Still Cool

As electricity grids grow more complex – absorbing variable renewable energy, accommodating surging demand from electrification and managing aging infrastructure – network operators are increasingly turning to the demand side for solutions. Energy flexibility has been positioned as the answer: a way for commercial and industrial firms to monetize their controllable assets and play an active role in grid stability. Vendors, aggregators and policymakers have embraced this enthusiastically, and the market infrastructure to support it is growing fast.

For most corporate energy managers, however, flexibility remains firmly on the backburner. Translating latent capability into active market participation requires decision-makers to:

• Navigate schemes that vary widely by geography.
• Build a business case that competes with more immediate energy priorities.
• Overcome awareness gaps that leave many energy leaders unsure whether the opportunity even applies to their site.

The result is a market maturing rapidly on the supply side, but lagging behind in terms of corporate uptake.

In our Best Practices: Unlocking The Energy Flexibility Opportunity report, we interviewed 12 energy leaders in commercial and industrial firms based across Europe, North America and APAC to understand how firms are responding to this flexibility opportunity. We discovered that:

• Firms will only participate where there are proven financial incentives.

  For most firms to participate in demand-side response programmes, financial returns are non-negotiable – whether in the form of direct revenue from providing flexibility or cost savings on their energy bill. This means that organizations tend to concentrate participation in more mature markets with well-established incentive structures. As such, the wide regional variation in scheme design, payment mechanisms and regulatory maturity complicates participation, especially for firms operating across multiple geographies.

• Adoption remains low due to competing priorities and limited opportunities

  Corporate and industrial firms face a range of competing priorities – from volatile energy prices to legacy system upgrades and basic energy visibility – that push flexibility down the agenda. For many energy leaders, participation in demand response programmes, or even just a basic flexibility strategy, remains a ‘nice to have’ rather than an operational imperative. Asset constraints compound this: organizations with higher constant baseloads or limited electrification have fewer flexible assets to offer the grid, and this can vary significantly from site to site.

• The market continues to mature through a combination of public and private innovations.
  Despite low corporate uptake, the market infrastructure to support flexibility is growing due to a combination of government frameworks and private investment. For example, in the UK, Ofgem approved the evolved service design for the Demand Flexibility Service run by NESO in March 2026, to enable year-round usage and unlock new opportunities for consumers participating via an aggregator. On the private side, Schneider Electric and Kraken announced a strategic partnership in early June to provide DSOs and utilities with real-time network visibility and demand-shifting capabilities, with the aim of unlocking faster grid connections for data centres and large industrial loads without relying on costly infrastructure upgrades.

What our research makes clear is that awareness remains one of the largest barriers: many energy leaders are simply unaware that this opportunity could exist for their site, or that existing assets may qualify to participate. With the market continuing to mature and significant growth in tools and platforms to support flexibility, the window for early movers is opening – and the firms that begin building their flexibility strategy now will be best placed to capture the financial and operational benefits as the market scales.

To learn more about best practices to implement a successful flexibility strategy, read the full report: Best Practices: Unlocking The Energy Flexibility Opportunity.