Utah Clean Energy Guide

No state tells a stranger clean energy story right now than Utah. In 2025 the state installed more than 1.2 GW of solar — its biggest year in a decade, vaulting it to 8th nationally for new solar capacity after ranking 36th in 2023. In June 2026 it switched on the largest solar-plus-storage plant in PacifiCorp's six-state territory. It hosts the country's most-watched enhanced geothermal project. And in the middle of all that, the legislature sunset the state's renewable tax credits and slapped a new per-megawatt tax on wind and solar.

The result is a market moving in two directions at once: record buildout on the ground, retreat in the statehouse. Coal still supplied 45.4% of Utah's generation in 2024 — the largest single source — while solar, at 15.1%, is the fastest-growing. Governor Spencer Cox's Operation Gigawatt wants to double the state's energy production within ten years, and PacifiCorp's own modeling shows data centers could demand roughly 6,000 MW of new load by 2030. Something has to give, and this guide walks through what.

State Policy: The Target Was Hit, Then the Ladder Got Pulled Up

Utah's only renewable standard is the Energy Resource and Carbon Emission Reduction Initiative (SB 202, passed in 2008), which set a purely voluntary goal of 20% renewable electricity by 2025 — and only "to the extent that it is cost-effective to do so," with no interim targets. Here is the twist: Utah essentially got there. Utility-scale renewables supplied about 20.9% of the state's generation in 2024, per EIA. But rather than replacing the expired goal with a binding successor, the legislature spent 2025 and 2026 moving the other way.

The 2025 Session: Credits Out, Taxes In

Three bills from the 2025 session reset the economics of utility-scale renewables in Utah. HB 264 (Rep. Kay Christofferson) sunsets the state's income tax credits for solar, geothermal, biomass, and wind — credits that previously had no end date — for systems placed in service after January 1, 2028. HB 378 (Rep. Casey Snider) imposes a new annual tax of $1,050 per megawatt of capacity on wind and solar facilities that begin operating after January 1, 2026, with revenue directed to a Species Protection Account; projects under construction or holding PPAs before that date are exempt. And SB 192 (Sen. Derrin Owens) requires commercial wind and solar systems producing over 600 kWh to include battery or alternative storage to qualify for state tax credits at all, with carve-outs for projects already in interconnection queues or holding signed transmission agreements before January 1, 2025.

The market noticed. ProPublica reported in December 2025 that since May 2025, 51 solar projects — roughly 25% of Utah's interconnection queue — had withdrawn their applications, even though solar makes up two-thirds of new projects in that queue. For a state whose governor wants to double energy production, driving a quarter of the queue away is a remarkable own goal.

The 2026 Session: A Farmland Compromise and a Nuclear Push

The 2026 general session softened the edges without changing direction. HB 16 (Rep. Colin Jack) — the compromise version of 2025's failed HB 241 — requires solar arrays over 1 MW to have a decommissioning plan before a local jurisdiction can issue a construction permit, and bars state incentives for solar built on prime farmland. HB 412 requires solar and wind projects of 1 MW or more to consult with the Division of Wildlife Resources during local permitting, though it grants no new denial authority. HB 323 kicks off a two-year study of solar panel disposal and recycling, with rules due by 2028.

Meanwhile the nuclear track got the red carpet. HB 249 (2025, Rep. Carl Albrecht) created the Utah Energy Council, Energy Development Zones, a Nuclear Energy Consortium, and the Utah Energy Research Board — the legislative backbone of Operation Gigawatt. The 2026 session added HB 78 (a state Nuclear Energy Regulatory Office and exploration of a nuclear fuel lifecycle campus), HB 514 (an Energy Infrastructure Service District), and HB 545 (an Energy Development Infrastructure Fund for nuclear and transmission). The state projects roughly 67% of its current generating plants will retire within 20 years with only 16% replacement capacity currently planned — a retirement cliff that explains the urgency, if not the technology preferences.

Rooftop Solar: Net Billing, Not Net Metering

• Net metering: Closed to new Rocky Mountain Power customers since November 15, 2017; grandfathered customers keep it until January 1, 2036.
• Net billing (Schedule 137): New rooftop customers get export credits of 5.636 cents/kWh June through September and 4.745 cents/kWh October through May, recalculated each March 1.
• State tax credit: The residential solar PV credit is fully phased out — systems installed in 2024 or later are ineligible. Other residential renewables still get 25% up to $2,000, and the commercial credit is 10% up to $50,000, but under HB 264 these expire for systems placed in service after January 1, 2028.

Major Projects: Iron County's Solar Belt and a Geothermal Moonshot

Utah's utility-scale story runs through a handful of southern and central counties, with PacifiCorp as offtaker on most of the flagship solar deals — frequently on behalf of Meta.

• Green River Energy Center (Emery County): 400 MW of solar paired with a 400 MW / 1,600 MWh battery built from 484 Tesla Megapacks. Developed by rPlus Energies under a PPA with PacifiCorp, it reached commercial operation June 23, 2026 — the largest solar-plus-storage facility in PacifiCorp's six-state territory, expected to generate over $55 million in property taxes over its life.
• Cape Station (Beaver County): Fervo Energy's enhanced geothermal system near Milford — 500 MW planned, with a roughly 100 MW first phase operating by early 2027 and first power expected in 2026. Fervo closed $421 million in non-recourse project financing on March 19, 2026; offtakers include Southern California Edison, Shell Energy, and community choice aggregators. Utah already ranks among the top geothermal states, with 70.7 MW operating at the end of 2024.
• Appaloosa Solar 1 (Iron County): 240 MWdc / 200 MWac, owned by Greenbacker Capital Management and developed by rPlus Energies, with Sundt Construction as EPC. Online January 24, 2024 under a PacifiCorp Schedule 34 PPA supporting Meta's Utah operations.
• Cove Mountain Solar 1 & 2 (Iron County): 180 MWac combined from D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments, operating since April 2021 under long-term PacifiCorp PPAs on behalf of Facebook.
• Milford Wind (Beaver/Millard counties): 306 MW across 165 turbines, owned and operated by Longroad Energy. Utah's largest wind farm has run since 2009 and avoids roughly 382,000 metric tons of CO2 annually.
• Red Hills Renewable Park (Iron County): 80 MW, operating since December 2015 — Utah's first utility-scale solar plant of its class.

Two structural notes. First, wind has flatlined: Utah's 389.7 MW of wind capacity has not grown since 2021. Second, storage is where the whiplash shows — EIA counted just 1 MW of utility-scale battery capacity statewide at the end of 2024, and Green River alone added 400 MW in June 2026.

Siting & Opposition: No State Board, So Counties Hold the Pen

Utah has no state siting board for utility-scale wind or solar. Permitting runs entirely through county and municipal land-use processes — zoning, conditional use permits, rezones — which makes a single county vote decisive. The state's role is growing only at the margins: HB 16's decommissioning-plan requirement and farmland incentive restrictions, HB 412's wildlife consultation, and HB 249's Energy Development Zones, which steer development rather than override local control. No notable statewide setback rules have been identified for wind or solar.

The clearest demonstration came in November 2025, when Millard County's planning commission rejected Creekstone Energy's rezone application covering roughly 9,000 acres for a solar project outside Delta — a project tied to a hyperscale data-center campus — with county commissioners reported likely to follow suit. That is the Utah pattern in miniature: opposition here operates through rezone denials, state-level taxes and incentive rollbacks, and farmland-protection legislation rather than formal bans. No county-wide moratorium or ban ordinance on wind or solar was found in Utah between 2024 and 2026 — the resistance is quieter than a ban, but no less effective.

The cultural pressure is real, though. ProPublica documented rancher concerns in Millard County about solar consuming farmland, and legislators channeling constituent complaints — Rep. Carl Albrecht cited grievances about a solar facility near Richfield. That sentiment produced the failed HB 241 in 2025 and its enacted successor HB 16 in 2026, championed by Rep. Colin Jack. We track county-level fights, rezone battles, and project-specific disputes as they develop on our Utah opposition tracker.

Demand: The Data-Center Wave Meets a Retirement Cliff

Utah is a small system about to face very large asks. Total utility-scale generation was 35.1 million MWh in 2024 (39th among states) on 10,277 MW of net summer capacity (38th). Against that baseline, PacifiCorp's 2025 IRP modeled a data-center sensitivity showing incremental load of approximately 6,000 MW by 2030 and 7,000 MW by 2035 if all interconnection requests materialize. Meeting it would require adding — beyond the utility's preferred plan by 2038 — 5,993 MW of utility-scale solar, 3,872 MW of wind, 9,650 MW of storage, and 2,354 MW of gas peakers. PacifiCorp's 2024 forecast update already put Utah's annual energy demand 11% higher in 2030 than its 2023 forecast (a 3.6 million MWh increase), with peak demand up 8%, or 511 MW.

The single biggest ask sits in Millard County, where a data-center campus near the Intermountain Power Project site — developed by Joule Capital Partners in partnership with Caterpillar on roughly 4,000 acres — could eventually reach up to 4 GW of power capacity, among the largest in the country. The irony writes itself: the same county whose planning commission rejected the 9,000-acre Creekstone solar rezone is hosting the load that solar was meant to serve.

The supply side is fighting headwinds from both capitols. About 1,400 MW of Utah solar is scheduled for 2026, including large projects near Cedar City and Delta — but KUER reported in May 2026 that federal actions under the Trump administration, including federal-land approval bottlenecks and tax-credit rollbacks, threaten roughly 40% of Utah's planned solar over the next five years. Stack that on top of the state's own HB 378 tax and HB 264 credit sunset, and the projects best positioned to serve the data-center wave are precisely the ones being made more expensive to build.

Outlook: Betting on Everything Except What's Working

Utah's official energy strategy — Operation Gigawatt, the nuclear consortium, the Energy Development Zones — is a bet on technologies that mostly do not exist in the state yet, while the technology setting installation records gets taxed. ProPublica's framing from December 2025 holds up: the state's fastest-growing power source is the one lawmakers made harder to build. Solar delivered 15.1% of Utah's generation in 2024, more than wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass combined, and the 2025 buildout will push that share higher.

Still, the fundamentals favor continued development. PacifiCorp's day-one EDAM participation deepens Utah's integration with the broader Western market. Cape Station gives the state a legitimate claim to leadership in next-generation geothermal — a firm, carbon-free resource that fits Operation Gigawatt's reliability framing far better than the rhetoric suggests. The $8 billion already invested in wind, solar, and storage pays landowners $26.5 million a year in lease payments and $22.2 million in state and local taxes, from a sector generating enough for 843,000 homes and supporting 7 in-state manufacturing facilities. The question for the next legislature is whether Utah keeps treating its most productive new resource as a problem to be managed — or as the fastest way to fill a 6,000 MW hole.

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