Solar Positioned to Meet Rising Electricity Demand Despite Policy Uncertainty
The Wood Mackenzie analysis says that solar will be an important part of electricity demand in the foreseeable future, even if government policy is unstable.
The solar business is approaching 2026 as the main technology for meeting increasing electricity demand, even if the government regulatory environment is rather unstable.
Global Solar Capacity to Nearly Triple by 2034
A recent estimate by Wood Mackenzie says that the total amount of solar power throughout the world will almost quadruple, going from over 3 TW now to almost 8 TW by 2034. The 2025 market was shaped by changes in China’s economy and measures taken by U.S. executives. The fundamentals for 2026, on the other hand, are still driven by a huge rise in power consumption.
Power consumption in the US is expected to climb by 2.9% per year until 2035. Data centers, factories, and the electrification of transportation are the main things driving the boom.
Wood Mackenzie is now keeping track of 160 GW of heavy load demands that have been made and are being built. This is 22% of the entire peak demand for 2024.
Solar Leads New Power Generation
The research says that the Trump administration has supported fossil fuels and created the “volatile environment” that led to project cancellations. Solar will be a major source of new power.
From 2026 to 2030, the amount of solar energy produced in the U.S. is expected to rise by 232 GWh per year, which is a 65% increase. In the same time frame, yearly gas production is predicted to rise by 340 GWh, or 21%.
In the Asia Pacific area, new capacity investments are mostly going toward solar, wind, and storage, which is a similar change. In 2025, solar made up 11% of the region’s power-generating mix. By 2030, it is expected to make up 17%. According to Wood Mackenzie, by the end of the decade, solar, wind, and storage will account up one-third of the power generating mix, up from less than 10% in 2020.
Balcony Solar Expansion in U.S. Markets
The research talks about how “balcony solar” might lead to a lot of new U.S. legislation, in addition to demand on a utility scale. These small-scale systems are sometimes called “plug-in solar.” They have already become quite popular in Germany, where they made up 40% of all registered installations in 2024.
Utah was the first state in the U.S. to let homeowners utilize portable solar systems up to 1.2 kW without having to sign a utility hookup agreement. More than a dozen states have passed similar laws since then.
The paper says that there are a number of problems with the U.S. market for balcony solar, even if it has low payback times of fewer than five years. These include fewer unified electrical standards than in Europe, a lower standard voltage of 120 V, and a greater percentage of single-family houses that may not like the way the systems look.
Wood Mackenzie says that solar power will still be one of the major ways to generate energy that can meet global demand growth over the next five years, even if there are these problems and the first market downturn in China is projected in 2026.
