Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: March 2, 2026
America's ongoing clean energy build-out!
In 2026, renewables are projected to provide 93% of all new-built electricity-generating capacity across America.
Tell your state leaders to accelerate solar and battery build-outs!
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Reasons For Hope
The Energy Information Administration projects that the United States will build a record-high 86 GW of new power capacity from all sources in 2026, including 43.4 GW of solar (51% of the total), 24.3 GW of battery storage (28%) and 11.8 GW of wind (14%). That’s 93% renewables in new energy construction, and just 7% new fossil gas! In 2026, renewables are projected to provide 93% of all new-built electricity-generating capacity across America!
Two things are true here. First, this is the best the U.S. has ever done on renewables, or power buildout generally — solar and battery economics now are just that good! But it’s still far short of what’s needed and is held back by massive ongoing self-sabotage, as the White House continues to block gigawatts of market-desired clean power projects. America could clearly be doing much, much better. For context, China built 315 GW of solar plus 119 GW of wind in 2025.
Amid federal chaos, a lot of the leadership for U.S. clean energy is now at the state level. California is achieving incredible new milestones as the Golden State advances its solar-plus-battery development. From January 31 through February 2, 2026, solar plus batteries provided a large fraction of the state’s power for a continuous 44-hour stretch, with day-charged batteries running overnight to provide round-the-clock solar electricity. And this is in the winter, with fewer sunny hours per day. With modern energy storage chemistries, grid-scale batteries simply solve intermittency!
The Texas grid is more stable than ever thanks to a massive build-out of batteries. The state’s energy supply even exceeded power demand during the recent Winter Storm Fern, a sharp contrast from the 2021 mass Texas power outages due to fragile gas infrastructure freezing up in winter storms. Some Texas startups are now repurposing batteries from old EVs for the grid!
As the White House continues to sabotage clean energy projects, electricity bills for American homes keep rising in a completely avoidable electricity shortage. Now more than ever, state leaders must accelerate the build-out of clean, cheap, and reliable solar and battery power with every policy lever available. Identifying and eliminating bottlenecks to clean energy deployment must be a top priority, using every power possible to speed up or skip over administrative, permitting, and interconnection hurdles. We need more clean energy, and we need it as fast as possible!
Tell your state leaders to accelerate solar and battery build-outs!
Your Dose of Climate Hope is written by Sam Matey-Coste for Climate Action Now.
