By Zona Martin, Analyst
As electricity demand surges across the country, states are facing new pressures to address the barriers to building more energy generation. For state policymakers, one avenue for overcoming these obstacles is the passage of siting and permitting legislation – which determines whether energy projects get built and how quickly they can break ground.
Our team at Tomorrow Energy Partners realized that despite the importance of siting policy, there was no way to see where and how many siting bills were being introduced and passed, nor their potential to improve or hinder building new energy resources. This is the type of information that our client, the mission-driven clean energy innovation and deployment nonprofit Clean Tomorrow, could use to educate the public about opportunities to build more clean energy and lower electricity rates. So, we got to work.
Our team built an interactive public dashboard that currently tracks 231 bills introduced in 2026 across 40 states, including policies that regulated setback distances, decommissioning and financial-assurance requirements, local zoning authority, moratoriums, and more. We rate every bill on their potential to make it easier or harder to build wind, solar, and battery projects in each state. We also include detailed overviews of current siting policy frameworks across all 50 states.
And what a treasure trove of information it is. Grounded in our expertise on state policy approaches to renewable siting, we conducted detailed analysis on what types of bills are popular, where legislators are having success, and how trends are changing over time. The picture that emerged in 2026 was more balanced – and more encouraging – than the surge in restrictive siting bills that defined the 2025 legislative agendas.
What We Found
2026 was an active year for renewable energy siting. During the short legislative sessions, lawmakers across the country introduced a wave of bills to reshape the rules around where and how large-scale wind, solar, and battery projects can be built.
Like last year, most of the introduced bills attempted to make it harder to build clean energy through aggressive policies like statewide moratoriums, statewide standards as de facto bans, and strengthening local permitting authorities. These attempts largely failed, with most proposals never advancing out of committee and coordinated defensive campaigns successfully defeating those that did. What became law broke decisively for permissive policy in both red and blue states, though most of the legislation involved minor improvements to the status quo rather than comprehensive siting reforms.
Good Data Drives Progress
This was a soup-to-nuts project for Tomorrow Energy Partners, and one of my personal favorites this year. We identified a challenge our client faced: the lack of comprehensive data available on siting policy bills, which is one of Clean Tomorrow’s key focus areas. Then, we put our expertise and acumen to work to deliver a product that not only provides the internal analysis our client was looking for, but also serves as an enduring public resource for state policymakers and siting policy advocates nationwide. This legislative tracker is updated by our team every week, ensuring our client always has the most up-to-date analysis on hand.
Finally, we took the data compiled in the legislative tracker and crafted our analysis into the 20+ page 2026 Legislative Round-Up: The State of Siting report. With original visualizations and case studies, the report dives deeper into national trends, how defensive coalitions repeatedly stopped restrictive bills, and which states saw major achievements in 2026. Within two months of its release, this report has already advanced our client’s educational goals, as more than 100 policymakers and advocates have downloaded the report.
In this case and many more, good data is key to driving policy action. By taking a bird’s eye view at state legislatures across the country, we have identified what is trending, what is working, and what still needs to be done. We’re excited to continue working with our client to expand this educational work grounded in hard facts and analysis.
Interested in bringing this data-driven approach to your own project? Reach out to partner with us and learn more.