State of Clean Power in Q2 26: Environmental Defense Fund Report

The Environmental Defense Fund (“EDF”) issued on September 28th a report titled:

THE STATE OF CLEAN POWER IN Q2 2026: Assessing Clean Power Capacity in the United States  (“Report”).

A contributor to the Report is listed as Atlas Public Policy and authors of the Report include:

• Tom Taylor
• Sophie Tolomiczenko

Clean power is described for purposes of the Report as including:

• Batteries
• Geothermal
• Hydroelectric (conventional and pumped storage)
• Onshore wind
• Offshore wind
• Solar (photovoltaic and thermal)

The Report excludes nuclear generation or biomass.

Introductory comments provided by the Report include:

• The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects electricity generation in the United States will increase by 25 to 50% from 2025 through 2050.
• Meeting the projected demand will require new generation, storage, transmission, and demand-side resources to achieve affordability and reliability goals.
• The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Mid-Year 2026 Electricity Update notes that U.S. electricity consumption is forecast to rise by nearly 2% in 2026.
• The projected 2% increase is stated to be driven by data centers, air conditioning, and industrial demand.

Described as “key takeaways” by EDF in the Report include:

• The U.S. added 26 GW of new clean power capacity in the first half of 2026.
• Solar and batteries dominate the clean power pipeline, accounting for roughly 87% of planned and under-construction clean capacity and an estimated $281 billion in future investment.  
• Solar is poised to overtake wind as the largest source of U.S. clean power capacity in operation.
•   Clean power cancellations increased with developers canceled 14.9 GW of planned or under-construction clean power capacity in the first half of 2026.
• Natural gas development accelerated as planned and under-construction gas power capacity increased by 23.5 GW in the first half of 2026.
• Clean power development is concentrated in a few states with 76% of existing, planned and under-construction clean power capacity located in congressional districts represented by Republicans, dominated by Texas, Arizona, Oregon and California.

A copy of the Report can be found here.