Why every supply chain organisation needs a Chief Energy Officer

How to scale? · Point of view · 3 min read

Electric trucks turn logistics companies into energy companies, whether they like it or not. Organisations that treat energy as a strategic capability, not a utility bill, will scale fastest.

Your trucks are now part of an energy system

With diesel, energy was a fuel card. With electric trucks, energy becomes a design question: which grid connection, how much contracted capacity, which tariffs, when to charge, whether to store, whether to generate and whether to share. That is why I keep arguing that every organisation built around a supply chain needs a Chief Energy Officer.

This is not a rhetorical question. In a workshop with one of the world’s largest logistics service providers and its partners, they told us they feel a responsibility, and even see an opportunity, in offering on-site depot charging to others. Will the big logistics players become energy management companies?

The grid decides the pace

The numbers explain why this matters. TNO’s August 2026 study for PBL finds that, on TCO and range alone, battery-electric is the most attractive choice for almost every new truck from 2026. But if logistics companies can only use the spare capacity on their existing grid contracts, the electric share of the Dutch truck fleet stalls at around 10% in 2030 and 20% in 2040. That is roughly 3.5 times lower than without grid congestion.

Mitigation helps, but only partly. Stationary batteries and time-block contracts could lift that share to at most 31% in 2040 on existing connections. And mobility has low priority in the ACM’s framework for allocating new grid capacity.

“With diesel, energy was a fuel card. With electric trucks, energy becomes a design question.”

Haijo Kampinga

Energy demand is concentrated, and so is the opportunity

Charging demand will not be spread evenly. ICCT and Fraunhofer ISI’s September 2026 analysis finds that depot charging typically accounts for 70–80% or more of truck charging energy in European countries, and that the top 10% of locations account for 60–90% of national charging demand. Around logistics hubs like Venlo, projected demand in 2035 reaches over 1,200 MWh per week with peaks of almost 17 MW, mostly from overnight depot charging.

That makes energy a strategic asset. If you secure capacity in the right places, and design the depot for your 2030 fleet rather than your first three trucks, you build an advantage that competitors cannot copy quickly. As MAN’s latest strategy report puts it: the system, not the truck alone, creates the advantage.

Thanks to Dr. Hussein Basma and his colleagues at ICCT and Fraunhofer ISI for this analysis. The interactive maps in the report are well worth exploring.

What a Chief Energy Officer actually does

• Owns the energy roadmap next to the fleet roadmap: connection capacity, contracts, charging windows, storage and generation.
• Brings energy into planning. Range and charging windows become inputs to the plan, not afterthoughts.
• Builds partnerships behind the meter with landlords, neighbours, energy partners and grid operators, from shared depots to a regional Depot Charging Club.
• Speaks finance. Treats energy cost, grid fees and the value of flexibility as part of TCO.

It doesn’t have to be a new job title. But it does have to be a clear mandate, at the level where decisions about vehicles, real estate and finance come together.