February 26, 2026
Amy Harder, national energy correspondent for Axios and hosting the keynote panel on Thursday, February 19 at Intersolar and energy storage North America 2026opened the day’s discussion with an extremely blunt – and largely true – statement.
“We live in fractured times, to say the least, with regard to virtually everything on this planet, including clean energy.”
Since President Trump’s retaking of the Oval Office in November 2024, the solar industry has been on somewhat shaky footing. Federal policy changes like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) have eroded Biden-era renewable energy policies in favor of the former and current president’s more fossil-centric agenda. The balance of electrical energy has been turned upside down.
As for where we go from here, the consistent theme is collective action, even if that means breaking things up across state lines to get projects across the finish line.
States are taking matters into their own hands
The keynote panel on the first day of Intersolar 2026 sent a strong message: despite federal policy changes, renewable energy is still being built in this country.
The panel, hosted by Sammy Roth, former Los Angeles Times climate reporter and current writer of Climate-Colored Goggles, featured four top state-level policymakers and their latest methods for moving forward in a post-ITC world.
“In California, everyone is just happy if you can prevent costs from rising a little less,” says Roth. “Affordability is the big issue that we’re all struggling with right now, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case forever. … You’re obviously going to want and need to continue to grow this space after that’s what gets governors elected, presidents get elected.”
JC Sandberg, head policy officer at the American Clean Power Associationsays that even if state-level policies go into effect to offset federal changes, there could be some tension in the solar world.
“We were started dancing by the environmental movement many years ago, but since we started dancing we have become a very big domestic economic engine,” he says. “I think there have been some growing pains. … One side of the political dynamic wants to hear about all the environmental benefits. The other side is more convinced by the business benefits, but doesn’t want to hear about the environmental benefits.
“How we manage that tension going forward, at the federal, state and local levels, I think will be critical.”
At the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairsoffers Assistant Secretary of Energy Michael Judge a way to manage things across state grids in distributed energy resources.
“Massachusetts actually has the second-highest distributed solar penetration of any state in the country, behind Hawaii,” Judge said. “It’s because we don’t really have a lot of utility-scale opportunities.”
That lack of truly massive utility-scale projects is “breaking the grid” for the Bay State, Judge says. That brings its own set of opportunities and challenges for the state, he adds.
“We generally do not connect solar projects and transmission,” he continues. “Virtually everything we’ve built is based on the distribution system, and we’ve been very successful in driving rooftop adoption, but there’s more we need to do. If you look at our long-term policy goals and our 2050 vision… We called for 27 GW of solar just for Massachusetts. We’re now at 4.5, 5 (GW). It’s a big part of what we’re trying to do.”
Another point of tension the solar industry will have to deal with, panelists say, is the health of the U.S. energy grid itself as demand continues to rise.
Management of a tension grid
Affordability took center stage on day two of Intersolar and dominated much of the conversation during Thursday’s keynote.
“We operate from a neutral position: who owns it doesn’t matter,” says Arnab Pal, executive director of Implement action. “Each of these utilities is a monopoly regulated by a PUC, which is typically appointed by a governor or elected, and I think ultimately we have to think about their business model. And for them, it brings costs down.
“We have to work with the utilities, but I think everyone’s number one North Star should bring these costs down.”
However, the topic of affordability itself, even as rising energy bills become a top issue under a busy network, is a bit of a strange beast. The terms of the argument around affordability are difficult to define, says Doreen Harris, president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Yet the topic of grid voltage and utility affordability has become a top issue among consumers and utilities alike since the data center boom of recent years.
“The affordability problem for this sector is a bit of a marketing problem,” says Pal. “If you look at generation rates (in California), they have been largely flat, or in line with inflation. The whole affordability problem is in the supply of electricity, in the transmission and distribution.
“The problem I think the industry faces is that in the states where solar and storage are the most successful and there are affordability issues, the general public might jump to the conclusion — especially if helped by the federal government — that this state is expensive because they like solar. The truth is the exact opposite of that.”
Part of what needs to happen, Pal says, is “an industry-wide coordinated marketing campaign” in favor of solar energy. In light of the fact that federal policy seems to be changing by the week, and that the Trump administration is almost constantly criticizing renewable energy, the industry must adapt not only the way it acts, but also the way it presents itself.
In short: we have to adapt
Despite all the federal policy changes, solar energy had a relatively solid 2025 when you look at the numbers. Recent figures from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) show that solar accounted for 72% of new U.S. energy capacity additions in November 2025, making it a major leader in that regard.
However, there is an elephant the size of the federal government in the room.
“The elephant in the room that we alluded to at the beginning is that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to block not just offshore wind energy, but any large-scale onshore wind energy project,” Roth says. “Not just on federal land, but using all licensing authorities to try to stop or at least slow down anything that is happening on private property.”
Sandberg echoed Roth’s sentiment during the day two keynote panel, noting that wind energy was slowing tremendously among the new renewable additions, likely due in part to President Trump’s general distaste for wind farms. The solar industry must be able to adapt and remain flexible if it wants to avoid a similar fate.
“I think there’s a little bit of progress in solar, and there’s also progress in storage,” Sandberg said. “Where there is absolutely no progress is wind, and we could spend a day talking about why that is, whether it’s a golf course or (something else). In the first Trump administration, we deployed a lot of wind, more than under the Biden administration. This time, not so much, and you see that as a real barrier to green energy deployment.”
What does actively avoiding that fate look like in practical terms? For Heather O’Neill, president and CEO of Advanced energy unitedthe answer is simple: follow previous industry blueprints to create collaborative strategies.
“We really saw the affordability issues emerging (in Illinois in 2025),” she said. “They can’t build what they need to build, there’s an increasing demand, they’re part of PJM to some extent. You’re dealing with all kinds of affordability pressures, so the industry actually worked together. United worked with SEIA, with ACP, with the ACP regional affiliate and environmental and labor stakeholders to pass the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act.”
Now that the US is no longer the political “envy of the world” in solar energy, according to Harris, the resounding message of Intersolar 2026 was that, yes, implementing renewable energy is much more difficult than it needs to be right now. Still, companies, utilities, consumers and policymakers must come together and help steer the industry toward something resembling a collective whole.
“Even a state like New York can’t do this alone,” Harris said. “That was the beauty of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, that it really created this momentum nationwide and beyond. … I think it’s the case that this has also introduced market uncertainty in a way that is quite challenging.”
Tags: affordability, IESNA, Intersolar 2026, policy, project, Trump administration, utility, utility scale
