MIT finds solar and storage will preserve 74–95% of expected growth despite Republican cuts to IRA incentives

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

• MIT Study: Solar Survives IRA Rollback With 82% Capacity Intact: Researchers found that 82% of utility-scale solar generation capacity targeted by the Inflation Reduction Act will be preserved despite the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's cuts, with onshore wind absorbing a harder hit. Read More: Utility Dive.
• Leeward Energizes 525 MW of Oklahoma Solar, Builds 200 MW More: Leeward Renewable Energy now has 525 MW online in and another 200 MW under construction, assembling a 725 MW portfolio in a state better known for oil and wind. Read More: Oklahoma, PV Tech.
• Peak Energy Raises $80M for Sacramento Sodium-Ion Battery Plant: The startup chose for a sodium-ion battery manufacturing facility, betting on a chemistry that sidesteps lithium supply-chain risk. Read More: California, Axios.
• New Mexico Approves Community Solar Phase 2: The Public Regulation Commission cleared regulatory bottlenecks that had stalled projects since the 2021 Community Solar Act, opening a new RFP cycle focused on low-income subscriber access. Read More: PV Magazine USA.
• BESS Developer Bypasses Santa Cruz County via State Fast-Track: New Leaf Energy pulled its battery storage application from Santa Cruz County and shifted to California Energy Commission jurisdiction to avoid local ordinance obstacles. Read More: Energy Storage News.

Solar & Storage

Leeward Renewable Energy's is quietly becoming one of the largest single-developer concentrations of utility-scale solar in the Southern Plains. With 525 MW already generating power and 200 MW under construction, Leeward is proving that — long a wind-first state — can absorb massive solar buildout. For developers scouting sites in the region, the portfolio signals that interconnection capacity, county-level permitting, and land availability remain workable at scale even as other states tighten siting rules. Read More: 725 MW Oklahoma solar portfolio, Oklahoma.

Farther west, Avangrid has begun laying panels at Oregon Trail Solar, a 57 MWdc project in Gilliam County. The project is employing 200 local union workers during construction, a detail that matters politically as state legislators weigh future renewable energy siting legislation. At 41 MWac, the plant is modest by today's standards, but Avangrid has been stacking mid-size projects across the Pacific Northwest, and the give the company ammunition in community acceptance fights elsewhere. Read More: Oregon, labor numbers.

In Sacramento, Peak Energy is raising $80 million to build what would be one of the first commercial-scale sodium-ion battery factories in the United States. Bloomberg and Axios both reported that the startup chose California for the plant, a bet on the state's manufacturing incentives and proximity to the country's largest battery storage market. Sodium-ion cells use abundant materials — sodium, iron, manganese — instead of lithium and cobalt, which means lower raw-material costs and fewer geopolitical supply-chain headaches. The technology trades some energy density for those advantages, but for stationary grid storage, where weight and volume matter less, the tradeoff can pencil out. If Peak Energy reaches production, it will give utilities and developers a domestic alternative to Chinese lithium-iron-phosphate cells at a moment when tariffs and trade policy are making imports more expensive.

California's storage sector also got a procedural jolt. New Leaf Energy from Santa Cruz County after running into local ordinance barriers and is now pursuing fast-track approval through the California Energy Commission instead. The move uses a state-level override mechanism that lets the CEC assert jurisdiction over energy facilities — a path more storage developers may follow as counties adopt restrictive zoning. It's a strategy worth watching: if it works for New Leaf, expect a wave of similar filings that shift permitting power from county planning boards to state regulators. Read More: withdrew its BESS application.

On the distributed side, Ameresco is installing rooftop solar across two campuses of the Community College of Philadelphia in. The project is small — no capacity figure was disclosed — but it fits a growing pattern of in the Mid-Atlantic locking in solar under existing interconnection agreements before utility rate structures change. Read More: Pennsylvania, institutional buyers.

Policy & Markets

The MIT study dominating today's conversation quantifies something the industry has been debating since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed: how much damage did the IRA rollback actually do? The answer, according to researchers, is less than feared. Across all clean electricity technologies, 74% of the capacity the IRA was expected to catalyze will still get built. Utility-scale solar fares best, retaining 82% of projected generation capacity. Distributed solar and battery storage land in the 80–95% preservation range. Onshore wind takes the biggest hit, though the study did not specify an exact figure for that sector.

The reason solar and storage proved more resilient is straightforward: their economics depend less on the incremental tax credit value that was cut. Module prices have fallen enough, and power purchase agreement rates have risen enough, that many projects pencil without the full IRA bonus credits. Wind projects, by contrast, tend to have thinner margins and longer development timelines, leaving them more exposed to policy shifts. For investors running portfolio models, the suggest overweighting solar and storage relative to wind in a policy-risk-adjusted framework. Read More: MIT numbers.

In , the Public Regulation Commission approved Phase 2 of the state's community solar program, unclogging a pipeline that had been stuck since the 2021 Community Solar Act created the framework but left key implementation details unresolved. The approval triggers a new RFP process with rules designed to steer capacity toward low-income subscribers — a provision that could shape how developers structure their offtake agreements. New Mexico's community solar market has been small; Phase 1 was limited in scope. Phase 2 should materially expand available capacity, though the PRC has not yet published a megawatt target for the solicitation. Read More: New Mexico.

Separately, the state's Environment Department announced a public hearing on an air quality permit for Project Jupiter, the Oracle-OpenAI data center planned in Doña Ana County. The facility would be powered by a fuel cell microgrid — an approach that avoids grid interconnection bottlenecks but raises its own emissions questions. Public complaints about the forced the hearing. For the clean energy industry, the case is a bellwether: data center developers are increasingly pairing behind-the-meter generation with hyperscale computing loads, and the regulatory treatment of those microgrids — clean or not — will shape siting decisions for years. Read More: permitting process.

LOOKING AHEAD

• New Mexico Community Solar RFP: With Phase 2 approved, developers should watch for the PRC to publish RFP terms and capacity allocations in the coming weeks — subscriber income-qualification rules will be the key variable.
• California CEC Battery Storage Jurisdiction: New Leaf Energy's fast-track filing at the CEC could set a precedent for how storage projects bypass restrictive county ordinances; a decision timeline has not been announced but will signal whether the override path is truly viable at scale.
• Peak Energy Factory Timeline: The $80 million raise puts the Sacramento sodium-ion plant on a path toward construction, but the company has not disclosed production capacity targets or a start date — those details will determine whether the project reshapes domestic battery supply or remains aspirational.

THE BOTTOM LINE: MIT's finding that 82% of utility-scale solar capacity survives the IRA rollback removes the last major excuse for project delays — the policy floor is now quantified, and it's higher than most developers feared.