Looking Back at 2025 to Look Forward for 2026: Navigating Policy Shifts and Market Surges

Contributed Content

Fri, December 5, 2025 astatine 8:52 AM CST 5 min read

The past twelvemonth saw a multitude of factors driving up energy prices, including accelerated maturation successful energy demand, proviso concatenation tightness, deployment delays for transmission and accumulation projects, and an uncertain governmental and permitting climate. We expect each of these trends to proceed successful 2026. Changing economics person turned the justification for task improvement successful 1 of the astir blimpish marketplace sectors connected its head. And portion caller entrants and technologies entered the marketplace, we besides saw technologies and developers favored by the anterior statesmanlike medication conflict to find their footing nether the existent one.

COMMENTARY

As businesses and argumentation makers strive to adapt, 1 underlying information remains: the explosive maturation of powerfulness request has made vigor 1 of the hottest sectors for investment. We expect that the whiplash and marketplace disruption caused by argumentation saltation successful an epoch of monolithic load maturation means important accidental for investors.

Historically, companies entering the vigor marketplace faced constraints of bequest hydro and thermal procreation mounting the marketplace rates beneath breakeven constituent for caller technologies and products; determination was small country for the outgo of innovation. Flat energy request meant that a first-of-a-kind concern could lone interruption adjacent with important authorities incentives and subsidies. Government grants and subsidies helped mature the solar, wind, and artillery markets to the constituent wherever they could vie against afloat depreciated bequest assets. With the vigor grid arsenic a static playing field, caller opportunities arose lone erstwhile bequest assets retired. In caller years, this dynamic has been upended. The marketplace present faces much entrants, greater demand, and much regulatory uncertainty. First, the Biden-era monolithic infrastructure investments nether the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act dangled billions of dollars of national funds to cost-share improvement crossed vigor production, transmission, and distribution. While mostly unspent, these funds did spur large involvement successful development, mostly from wind, star and artillery developers, though besides successful atomic and geothermal sectors. Second, a surge successful demand—largely driven by information halfway development, electrification, and the instrumentality of manufacturing to U.S. soil—is straining existing infrastructure and creating caller opportunities. Third, the argumentation shifts of the existent administration—including the rescission of granted permits, issuance of halt enactment orders, and freezes connected infrastructure funding—have created regulatory uncertainty, particularly with cleanable vigor options similar wind, star and artillery storage. Concurrently, the existent medication is exercising rarely-used powers successful favour of coal, earthy gas, and atomic projects. New exertion developers proceed to participate the marketplace to code the misalignment of request and supply. The existent medication has prioritized fixed thermal resources specified arsenic fossil, nuclear, and geothermal and de-prioritized and reevaluated the spot of upwind and star successful the market. Related sectors person been affected some positively, e.g. mining for captious minerals, and negatively, e.g. transmission tied to grid-scale upwind and star projects.