New renewable deployments were down in the first quarter this year as the industry continues to face headwinds, the American Clean Power Association said Monday.
The Inflation Reduction Act’s historic incentives helped to grow the development pipeline to 140 GW by the end of the first quarter of 2023, up 11% from the same time last year, the group said in its Clean Power Quarterly Market Report. But those developments are too early to impact installations, which have slowed for the first time since 2017.
“The clean energy revolution is underway,” ACP CEO Jason Grumet said in a statement. “We have the technology, financial capital and workforce to power our economy with clean, affordable and secure energy. There is broad bipartisan support for American energy innovation. But the clean energy transition will not succeed unless Congress and Governors enable the siting and construction of new energy facilities and support the build out of transmission that is required to bring clean power to the people.”
The first quarter saw 95 projects come online, totaling 4,079 MW of capacity, which was down 36% from the first quarter of 2022 and the lowest first-quarter total since 2020. Those installations included 2,200 MW of solar, 1,418 MW of wind and 461 MW of storage.
Florida was home to the most installations in the quarter with 974 MW, knocking Texas — with 701 MW — off the top spot that it had occupied “quarter after quarter.”
Wind installations were down the most, falling 50% from the first quarter last year, while storage and solar were down by 32% and 23%, respectively.
The decline can be attributed, in part, to the large quantity of projects that experience delays in the first quarter, with ACP saying 12 GW reported delays in the first three months of 2023, including 6.4 GW that had already experienced previous delays. That compares to just 6.9 GW of delays reported in the first quarter last year.
“Seesawing regulations due to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s ongoing anticircumvention investigation delayed or forced changes to solar module delivery plans,” ACP said. “Furthermore, long release timelines for modules detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection further pushed back delivery timelines for some major solar projects too.”
When added to capacity that is still delayed from the previous two years, some 63.3 GW of projects are facing delays now, and two-thirds of the delayed projects are solar power.
New projects might be down, but the clean power industry continues to have a very healthy development pipeline with 81,509 MW of solar, 20,176 MW of wind and 19,621 MW of storage all under development. Hybrid projects with storage paired with wind or solar make up 61% of the storage pending development.
A total of 406 projects are under construction across 44 states, totaling 48,957 MW. Florida appears unlikely to repeat as the number one state in the future as it is home to just 774 MW of new construction, compared to 12,684 MW in Texas, 6,564 MW in California and another five states with more than 2,000 MW under construction.
Projects in advanced development total 89,850 MW in 48 states, with Texas home to 11,272 MW, New York at 8,678 MW, California at 8,196 MW, Virginia at 6,214 MW and Indiana at 5,289 MW.
