Rising electricity system costs are creating divergent affordability challenges across G20 economies through 2050. McKinsey’s Alexander Weiss, Humayun Tai, and their coauthors explain that GDP growth is projected to outpace electricity system cost growth in emerging markets such as China, India, and Mexico, while advanced economies, including Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom, face the opposite trend. Countries are responding to affordability pressures through three broad approaches, including shielding consumers from rising prices and accelerating the supply of lower-cost domestic energy.
Image description: A scatter plot showing projected average annual growth in electricity system costs on the horizontal axis against projected average annual GDP growth on the vertical axis for G20 members from 2025 to 2050, both from zero to five percent per year. A diagonal reference line marks where GDP growth equals system cost growth.
India, Indonesia, China, Saudi Arabia, Canada, the US, Mexico, and South Africa sit above the diagonal line, with GDP outpacing system costs; India leads both measures at slightly less than 5 percent GDP growth and slightly less than 4 percent cost growth. Turkey, Australia, the UK, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, and Japan sit below the diagonal line, where system costs grow faster than GDP. End of image description.
To read the report, see “Global Energy Perspective 2026,” September 30, 2026.