China has the highest deployment score in a new electrification index covering 16 countries, while grid constraints and policy gaps threaten progress elsewhere. The index was developed by the We Mean Business Coalition with support from RMI.

Key Takeaways

  • China, France and Spain are grouped as having both relatively strong deployment and enabling conditions.
  • The UK has the largest gap between enabling conditions and deployment in the index.
  • More than 2 terawatts of generation and storage are waiting for grid connections in the United States.

What the electrification index measures

Published on October 27, 2026, the Electrification Competitiveness Index assesses both on-the-ground deployment and conditions that support further electrification. It groups the 16 countries into four categories rather than presenting the findings solely as a ranking.

China’s leading deployment score is supported by coordinated grid investment, industrial policy and incentives. France and Spain also fall into the strong-foundations group, helped by grid performance and the share of clean power. Electricity is more competitive with gas in all three countries than in most of the other economies assessed.

Grid queues and costs create obstacles

Germany, India, Italy, Poland and the UK have stronger enabling conditions than deployment. The UK has the largest gap between the two measures: industrial electricity costs around five times as much as gas per unit of energy. Germany faces a grid-connection backlog of hundreds of gigawatts.

The United States is among five countries classified as at risk of stalling. Federal policy reversals and grid congestion could slow its momentum. The more than 2 terawatts of generation and storage waiting for connections compare with roughly 1.3 terawatts of existing generation capacity; the figures cover different types of capacity.

Early-stage markets face investment gaps

Indonesia, the Philippines and South Africa are classified as being at an early stage, below the index’s halfway mark for both deployment and enabling conditions. Clean power accounts for 18% of generation in Indonesia and South Africa and 23% in the Philippines.

Grid investment in each of the three countries is below 0.4% of GDP, compared with an average of 0.65% across the index sample.

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