Yana Wilkinson
Vice President, Energy
A look at what matters for the lubricant and base oils industry
As we put together our view of the trends that will shape the coming year, one constant emerges: uncertainty.
This follows a series of years defined by uncertainty, prompting the philosopher’s question: if uncertainty is indeed certain, can it truly be considered uncertain?
It is in this situation that focus becomes important. The question we are asking ourselves at Kline is: What do companies need to do to succeed in 2026?
Volatility and change still persist, serving as the ever-fluctuating constant that underpins our lived experience. The implications of this for an industry as old as lubrication are complicated, especially given the period of relative security and conformity that we are coming out of.
To help companies answer this question, we have broken down our trends for 2026 at the macro level, followed by analyses of finished lubricants, base oils, and specialties.
As always, Kline is committed to help, and we look forward to working with you to make 2026 a successful year. Above all, we thrive on challenges. Therefore, we invite you to present us with your most complex issues, and together, let’s achieve outstanding results.
Three Macrotrends Impacting the Lubricants Industry (and What You Can Do About Them):
1. Let’s stop lamenting VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity). It’s time to build capability beyond crisis mode.
What: We can expect continued complexities in 2026, not attributed to any single factor. The challenges lie in confluence: workforce constraints, digitalization and AI readiness, geopolitics, and customer or application changes are all occurring simultaneously. These issues cannot be resolved in functional silos, and the situation is unlikely to become simpler.
So what: Instead of anticipating a return to “normal,” we need to treat broader risk sensing, interpretation, and mitigation as must-have organizational capabilities, not a crisis-only activity. Success in AI deployment (which is limited so far) is increasingly linked to non-digital factors such as strategic clarity and leadership quality. By fixing the basics, technology will amplify organizational quality and deficiency in equal measures. The key takeaway is to consider the horizons of impact and the nuances in responding to each.
2. Electrification pathways: Watch the edge cases, not the average
What: Electrification has deviated from the established roadmap, creating a complexity of electrification scenarios to consider. In addition to regulatory direction and cost-curves, substitutes and adoption edges also need to be considered. When it comes to technology, solid-state is a high impact/low-probability disruptor, whilst sodium-ion is a moderate-impact/high-probability disruptor.
So what: Instead of modeling a singular lithium-ion future, accounting for parallel battery substitutes is the way ahead. This implies that divergent battery chemistries, thermal impact of rising power density, and safety requirements are necessitating stress testing fluid demand mix forecasts across EV thermal and dielectric fluids, e-axle oils, greases, and grid-related applications. This needs to be done under multiple battery adoption scenarios, while keeping in view the changes taking place in the upstream battery materials, regulatory push, and associated supply-chain dependencies.
3. System-level demand adjacency for growth: Shift your unit of analysis
What: Growth applications are increasingly emerging as ecosystems; e.g., data centers, which lead to the complexity of cooling, captive power generation, and grid upgrades. Additionally, there are related activities such as construction, metals, or manufacturing. At a market level, it is evident in Indonesia, a resource-rich country striving to become a “platform/system” nation using industrial policy to internalize more of the EV value chain steps. While this presents a significant challenge, successful implementation would demonstrate a more systemic approach to longer-term growth.
So what: It is crucial to shift business development and account planning from a focus on “today’s asset lubrication” to incorporate longer-term system buildout. This necessitates targeting ecosystem builders such as utilities, EPCs, OEMs, and hyperscaler supply chains, as well as mapping the lubricant pull-through across related assets and processes, such as power gen, manufacturing, and services in the medium-to-longer term.
For more insights on 2026 energy trends, explore our Energy Trends series.
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