State legislatures are getting better at clean-energy permitting policy

Solar, wind, and batteries are the cheapest, fastest ways to add much-needed electricity to America’s grid. And across the country, more state legislatures are passing laws to streamline renewable development than are enacting policies to prevent clean energy from being built.

That’s the good news from the Siting Solutions Project, a nonprofit that tracks state energy permitting and siting policy. According to its new tally of more than 200 bills put forward in over 40 states in 2026, the results have been ​“more balanced — and more encouraging — than the surge in restrictive siting bills that defined 2025.”

Both this year and last, a flurry of proposals in Republican-controlled states aimed to make it harder to build clean energy. But while many of those bills passed into law in 2025, similar attempts have largely failed so far in 2026.

In fact, out of the 86 bills that would have hampered solar, wind, and battery siting and permitting this year, just one became law: a relatively scaled-back measure in Utah that limits state tax credits for large-scale solar projects on certain farmland. Only eight states have yet to conclude their legislative sessions for this year, making it unlikely that other restrictive bills will pass in 2026.

Last year, by contrast, 10 restrictive measures passed across Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, Oklahoma, and Texas. 

Most of the restrictive bills proposed in 2026 didn’t even make it out of initial hearings, said Nelson Falkenburg, siting policy manager at the Siting Solutions Project and a co-author of the report. Several bills that would have singled out solar, wind, and battery projects for sizable property setbacks and zoning constraints were defeated in floor votes. And one bill that did pass in Oklahoma, which would have rescinded property-tax benefits for solar and battery projects, was pocket-vetoed by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.

What changed from 2025 to 2026?

Today’s energy economics are driving the shift away from measures that stymie renewables, Falkenburg said.

“Energy demand is skyrocketing, driven in large part by AI and the buildout of data centers in a lot of these states,” he said. ​“At the same time, we’re in an affordability crisis,” with electricity costs rising rapidly in many parts of the country.

While the causes of these energy price spikes differ from region to region, experts agree that adding new, cheap generation to the grid is an effective way to help bring rates down. Solar, wind, and batteries cost less than new gas plants, and can get online years sooner, as the gas industry faces a turbine supply crunch.

“Legislators are responding to constituents, whose electricity prices are through the roof, and trying to provide relief,” Falkenburg said.

The need for electricity has led to what Falkenburg described as ​“a concerted effort from environmental groups, industry, and business groups, and in some cases folks from agriculture and labor communities, to defend against these restrictive bills and make sure they didn’t pass,” he said.

He pointed to a bill in Alabama that would have put a one-year moratorium on solar projects. The measure faltered in the face of pushback from not just solar developers but also the state’s steel industry, chambers of commerce, and lawmakers representing poorer districts seeking economic development.

Similar broad-based coalitions helped defeat clean-energy restrictions last year in Texas, the nation’s solar and battery leader.

“One of our assumptions is that legislators may be introducing more of these restrictive and punitive bills as signals to their constituents or to the broader politics of the time,” Falkenburg said, nodding to the role that clean energy opposition has taken as part of broader ​“culture war” politics. ​“But even in conservative states, legislators and governors’ offices are looking at how to get as much energy on the grid as possible.”

The pro-renewables laws that passed 

That imperative has driven an impressive showing for what Siting Solutions describes as ​“permissive” clean-energy siting and permitting policies this legislative season. These provisions include simplifying state permitting processes and setting criteria for how local governments manage project siting.

Siting Solutions chalked up significant wins in Illinois, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington state, as well as moderate policy gains in Maryland and New Jersey — all states controlled by Democrats.

But it also highlighted some positive policies passed in the Republican-controlled states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. For example, Oklahoma approved what Falkenburg described as a ​“really reasonable” bill that sets best practices for closing down and cleaning up old solar and battery projects without putting unreasonable burdens on developers. 

That record of success comes with a caveat, however: The permissive legislation that passed isn’t as heavily tilted in clean energy developers’ favor as the restrictive bills that failed were tilted against it. If anything, the report notes, ​“Democrats tended to introduce and advance bills that provide minor improvements to the status quo, rather than proposing changes that will substantially move the needle on clean energy deployment.”

One big reason for this is that pro-renewables legislation tends to focus on giving state bodies more control over how local governments manage siting and permitting — and that’s a political challenge. Local opposition has become a primary cause of failure for solar, wind, and battery projects across much of the country. But residents of counties, cities, and townships slated for clean-energy development don’t like having authority taken away from them.

Over the past half decade or so, Democratic-controlled states including Illinois and Michigan have passed laws limiting local governments’ ability to block energy projects on private land. This year, Virginia joined their ranks, passing a law that prevents local governments from instituting community-wide bans on solar projects.

To be clear, Virginia’s law doesn’t bar local governments from denying permits to solar developers. Rather, it prohibits blanket bans on all solar projects, sets statewide guidelines for assessing individual projects, and requires local governments to tell state regulators their reasons for rejecting proposals.

That law was something of a compromise between solar advocates and local officials, said Jim Purekal, a director at Advanced Energy United who heads the trade group’s legislative work in Virginia. ​“The dealbreaker was taking authority away from localities,” he said. ​“Once you move off that, I think the bill was structured in a very reasonable fashion. It just said, ​‘You don’t have to accept these projects — but this is what a good project looks like, for those who are asking.’”

Illinois took up its own revisions to state versus local control over solar and battery siting in a major energy bill passed in late 2025, which Siting Solutions included in the 2026 roundup because its provisions will go into effect this year. In Pennsylvania, which has a year-round legislative session, a proposal remains in play that would take a state-level standard-setting approach similar to Virginia’s.

The 2026 laws passed in Oregon and Washington aim to streamline slow and cumbersome state permitting processes, Falkenburg said. The intention is to lower costs for clean-energy developers and, in Oregon’s case, allow projects to get done fast enough to earn federal tax credits set to expire under the megabill passed by Republicans in Congress last year.

Clean energy still faces major barriers. Despite the progress tracked by Siting Solutions, lots of jurisdictions still make it very difficult for renewables to get approved. Plus, several states have backslid on clean energy policy in recent months, including New York, which rolled back its emissions-reduction targets, and California, which made major changes to its carbon cap-and-invest program that critics say will threaten the state’s ability to meet its climate goals. Siting Solutions’ report does not account for those measures because it purely focuses on siting and permitting issues.

And then there’s the Trump administration, which has essentially frozen federal permitting for renewables, threatening nearly 100 gigawatts of wind, solar, and battery projects. Those include over 20 gigawatts of projects on public lands, as well as more than 150 wind power projects awaiting a Department of Defense review.

Those barriers highlight the fact that it’s almost always easier to block clean energy projects than it is to craft laws that smooth their way to being built, Falkenburg said.

“Local governments should have some authority over the projects being proposed in their jurisdictions, absolutely,” he said. ​“At the same time, there’s a need to balance the energy goals of the state, the climate goals of the state if they exist, and the private landowner rights to be able to develop their land as they see fit. … This is a tough nut to crack.”