Navigating renewables in 2026 part 1:
Four market forces making operational excellence non-negotiable

The renewable energy market is approaching a major turning point: In 2026, renewables will generate more electricity than any other source on a global scale.  

It’s an exciting milestone for the industry, with much more to come. As electricity demand continues to climb rapidly, fueled largely by AI and data center consumption, operators are eager to seize this moment—and rightfully so.  

Renewables are already the cheapest and fastest-to-deploy energy sources by far, providing the best opportunity to deliver the clean, consistent, and profitable energy the world needs to power the future.  

But the industry is feeling the strain of its own success. Operational sophistication hasn’t kept pace with the growing complexity of portfolios. Many teams are stuck trying to manage gigawatts of assets with tools from a decade ago.  

In 2026, the ability to close that performance gap will define who advances and who struggles to keep pace. 

How can you avoid getting left behind? 

In this five-part series, “Navigating Renewables in 2026,” we’ll examine the challenges operators face and how you can respond to stay ahead of the pack. 

4 market forces that will demand operational discipline  

Even with all the growth potential, four market forces are converging that will test operators’ mettle — and create opportunities to pull ahead: 

1. The scale paradox. Renewables have solved the deployment problem almost too well. Solar projects are now 3X larger than a decade ago. Wind projects have grown by 66%, and battery projects have ballooned 330%. Portfolios now span continents, and hybrid configurations are the norm. But all of this growth has also slowed speed to market. Development timelines that once took under 2 years now take nearly 5, as more partners and more complexity enter the picture. 

This rapid growth is creating operational “debt.” Teams that try to brute-force their way to scale with more spreadsheets and site-level strategies will eventually fall behind. In 2026, scalability requires an operational playbook that can keep pace with your growth expectations. 

2. The era of margin squeeze. Compounding economic forces have tightened margins across the industry. Capital is more expensive due to higher interest rates and inflation, while supply chain and construction costs have gone up.  

Permitting and grid connection bottlenecks delay revenue and tie up capital, prompting investors to seek performance over projections in the form of later-stage, lower-risk, operating assets. With U.S. subsidies and European feed-in tariffs coming to an end, even rising PPAs haven’t been enough to offset increased costs.  

That’s why many operators are finding it’s far more profitable to optimize assets they already own than to build new capacity. But that shift exposes a new reality: you can’t afford performance “leaks.” Every underperforming asset, hour of downtime, or missed dispatch window hits the bottom line harder than ever. To compete at scale, operators need modern tools that enable fast, intelligent decision-making.  

3. Trust becomes currency. In this new operating environment, trust in operational data and decisions is critical.  

Market access demands auditable generation, storage, and dispatch data supported by certified metering and high-resolution telemetry. Stakeholders and investors want credible, transparent reporting. Boards and regulators need proof, not promises.  

And the bar is rising fast as regulators turn guidance into compliance mandates.  In the U.S., the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has already tightened settlement data requirements for storage and hybrid assets, demanding more granular, time-stamped reporting. 

Even where ESG mandates have softened, investors still require accurate, auditable data to justify investment. In 2026, credibility is crucial, and having clean, unified, audit-ready data is the only way to stay competitive. 

4. Signal vs. noise crisis. Most operators are drowning in irrelevant, inconsistent, and erroneous data that clouds decision-making. Without analytics to normalize, correlate, and prioritize it, they end up with more noise than actionable intelligence.  

Data proficiency relies on three pillars, but in the renewables market, these foundations are often built on shaky ground:  

• Availability: Operators are overwhelmed by data, yet don’t know what’s missing. Every OEM platform uses a different format and attempting to aggregate and harmonize this data with legacy tools adds delays and complexity. Duplicates and inconsistencies create noise that grows louder as more sources are added.  

• Reliability: Accuracy is the bedrock of decision-making confidence. Yet up to 40% of sensor data can be inaccurate as environmental exposure causes equipment degradation and failure. This leads to false alarms and skewed metrics. Most operators can’t even trust their own dashboards and reports. 

• Efficacy: More data doesn’t mean better decisions; instead, it often means more clutter and confusion. Operators rely on OEM sources, but there’s no way to determine what’s useful or adds value for decision making, or what’s just muddying the water. Operators need scalable ways to ensure their data is fit for purpose and to extract the most insights from it. 

Now more than ever, data clarity is a competitive advantage, and operators need solutions to amplify the signal and silence the noise. In 2026, those who can master their data will master their destiny, while the rest will struggle to keep up.  

Looking ahead: a modern approach to renewable energy operations 

Even as renewables cement their role in powering the future, success brings new challenges. 2026 is the year operational excellence becomes non-negotiable.  

Operators who modernize their approach will widen the gap in performance, revenue, profitability, valuation, and competitive positioning.  

Remember: you don’t need to solve everything at once to avoid being left behind. Action beats perfection, and through a series of operational shifts, early adopters can pull ahead quickly.  

Stay tuned for the next installments in our “Navigating Renewables in 2026” series to learn actionable strategies for overcoming these obstacles, including: 

• optimizing operational performance,  

• adopting a holistic approach to asset management,  

• using data quality as a competitive advantage, and 

• leveraging AI as a co-pilot in the process. 

If you’d like to explore these trends in more depth, access our on-demand webinar below.