Key highlights from the report:
Solar PPA Prices Rise Again in Q1
P25 solar PPA prices on LevelTen's Market-Averaged Continental Index rose by 4.6% during Q1 2026. On a year-over-year basis, they have increased by over 13%.
Solar project developers have continued to navigate the OBBBA's clean energy tax cuts with discipline and strategic poise, preserving tax credit access for meaningful portions of their pipelines through rigorous development work. But a host of other challenges, including tariffs, rising insurance costs, labor shortages, and federal-level permitting bottlenecks, are converging to create a difficult development journey.
CAISO in particular saw potent price increases during Q1, which drove an overall rise in Market-Averaged PPA prices. But with demand for electricity remaining high amid an ongoing data center boom, buyers are pursuing electrons and clean energy attributes from wherever they can be sourced — and solar projects are delivering.
Wind Prices Increase Across Markets
P25 wind prices on LevelTen's Market-Averaged Continental Index went up by nearly 8% during Q1 2026 as the sector continues to navigate substantial permitting difficulties. Year over year, P25 wind PPA prices have risen by nearly 24%.
Immense scrutiny and lengthy bottlenecks from the Trump Administration around permitting, especially with respect to FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) approvals, have stalled significant amounts of wind development across the US. Steep new demands from the agency around turbine height and location are forcing some wind projects to lower turbine height, and are pushing some projects out of viability entirely. With greenfield wind development at its lowest levels in years, competition for available wind capacity, coveted by sophisticated buyers looking to bring new large loads online, can be expected to remain high.
Iran Conflict Looms Over Energy Markets
The war in Iran is driving significant increases in oil prices across global energy markets. While skyrocketing oil prices have caused significant pain at gas pumps, US supply of natural gas has been relatively unimpacted — with Henry Hub prices, the US benchmark, holding largely steady as of late March. With natural gas setting power costs, electricity prices across the country have remained largely unimpacted for the time being, though time alone will tell what the long-term effects will ultimately be.
Meanwhile, regulators, state governments, and utilities continue to apply greater scrutiny to the grid impacts caused by an ongoing wave of large loads seeking to connect to the power system. Savvy data center developers are staying on top of these evolving requirements, with the most successful ones proactively bringing their own power and capacity through a variety of resources — including renewables.
Data Centers are Finding Capacity With Clean Resources
The PPA market's buy-side remains a two-sided story. While the largest, most sophisticated corporate players are hastily procuring large volumes of clean power, many other buyers are hesitant to enter the market at a time of ongoing price increases and uncertainty around pending updates to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP).
Different ISOs' frameworks for meeting system reliability are evolving in significant and often divergent ways. These frameworks are consequential for organizations looking to bring large loads online quickly, with standards around accredited capacity — the extent to which a resource, or mix of resources, can provide reliable power — a key factor. Astute buyers are attuned to this evolving landscape and, increasingly, are looking to portfolios of clean power resources like solar, storage, wind, and demand-response assets to satisfy these needs and get their facilities online quickly. Read more in the full report.
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