Who has the energy for collaboration? Well, it better be all of us because energy, as in the energy sector, needs a collaborative effort to secure its future.

Don’t take my word for it, listen to a group of energy thought leaders who talked about this very need for collaboration during the “Powering Progress Together” panel at YNOW2026, Yokogawa’s User Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans in September. The group, whose perspectives ranged from energy markets and infrastructure investment to academic research, policy and industry collaboration, arrived at one similar conclusion: energy challenges have become too interconnected for anyone to solve alone.

The group consisted of Lynn Lyon, energy and sustainability market lead for Yokogawa; Monika Simoes, CEO and founder of Energy Dialogues; Fedor Mikheev, energy sector leader at Texas A&M University; and Cooley May, CEO of C-MACC, a chemical market analysis firm. Collectively, they said the need for collaboration among energy providers, technology suppliers, refineries and more is becoming increasingly apparent as the definition of the energy industry expands. Conversations that were once focused on upstream, midstream and downstream oil and gas exploration and operations now include hyperscale data centers, electricity providers, technology companies, industrial manufacturers, regulators and government agencies.

This is the part where you come in, whether you’re an engineer using technology or a supplier providing it. Technology alone doesn’t create the resilient infrastructure for energy distribution to meet ever growing power demand around the world. But smarter process instrumentation and better usage of that instrumentation play a vital role in the future of energy. That’s because energy needs better information and a stronger foundation for decision making. It improves operations, predictability and investment outcomes. So, for the energy sector, control operators and instrumentation suppliers are becoming a strategic operating market for oil and gas and alternative energy companies alike. There’s a distinct and growing importance being placed on operational technology and data.

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But the shift and focus on collaborative efforts isn’t that simple. The ultimate challenge is to expand collaboration beyond familiar industry boundaries.

As Simoes pointed out,  “There are a lot of parallels in different industries that can serve us and how we move forward and how we innovate.”

One of those industries is ours and it’s already undergoing a similar push for more collaborative efforts in control systems. Open process automation has been gaining momentum and one place it has shown real progress is in energy. That’s largely thanks to ExxonMobil’s involvement with the standard’s development but the oil and gas giant has already demonstrated how it can streamline a refinery operation.

So, like control systems of the future, energy systems will be more interconnected, not less. AI, automation, electrification, industrial production, infrastructure investment and public policy increasingly affect one another and cannot exist in silos.

The energy sector fuels just about every market there is, so its growth and future security are paramount, but it won’t reach those needed heights without the help of better operations and processes.