The State of Utility Planning, 2026 H1

This article is one of a series in our review of all integrated resource plans (IRPs) for electric utilities across the United States. We provide analysis of expected load, planned capacity, modeled generation and emissions, and comparison to targets and decarbonization scenarios to evaluate progress toward a zero-carbon energy future. IRPs do not provide a fully accurate prediction of the future, but we focus on them because they reflect the direction that utilities are currently striving for and a set of proposed actions to get there.

Updates in 2026 H1

In the first half of 2026, the 23 utilities that updated their IRPs (representing 10% of total US electricity generation in 2024) made a range of revisions to their future plans.

• Load: 9 companies increased load projections, 4 decreased load projections, and 10 made changes of less than 1%.
• Wind and solar: 6 companies increased plans to build wind and solar by 2035 (+9.6 GW), 8 companies decreased these plans (-17.3 GW), and 9 companies made no change.
• Gas: 13 companies increased plans to build gas by 2035 (+9.4 GW), 6 companies decreased these plans (-2.3 GW), and 4 companies made no change.
• Aggregate changes: utilities that updated their IRPs increased projected load by 3% and increased projected emissions by 5.5%.

Major factors discussed in these IRPs included increased demand from large-load customers and electric vehicles, and several components of both existing and changing policy and regulation including renewable portfolio standards, tax credits, tariffs, regulations from the environmental protection agency, and resource adequacy rules from market operators.

In response to these external conditions, utilities in aggregate made shifts in their capacity plans away from wind and solar and toward gas. However, several utilities also proactively evaluated or put into place plans with advanced solutions of energy efficiency, virtual power plants, advanced transmission technologies, and clean repowering to meet growing electricity demand without the risk associated with new gas power plants.

In this article, we dive further into current utility resource plans, how they changed in the first half of 2026, and solutions utilities are implementing to make progress.

The current state of IRPs 

In our most recent IRPs projections (Exhibit 1), we continue to see a gap between projected emissions, target emissions, and decarbonization pathways such as the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (IEA NZE).

Most decarbonization pathways that meet global, economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050 find that the electricity sector in advanced economies needs to reach net-zero emissions by 2035. However, if all companies in our coverage meet their company targets, they are currently projected to reduce emissions by 59% by 2035, compared to a 2005 baseline. There is also a gap between both decarbonization and corporate targets and projected emissions based on IRPs representing utilities’ planned investments. Halfway through 2026, IRPs project emissions to be reduced by 47% by 2035, compared to a 2005 baseline.

Exhibit 1

Load

As of halfway through 2026, IRPs across the United States anticipate load will grow 23% by 2035 compared to 2024 levels (Exhibit 2). This is an increase of 2% compared to projections at the end of 2025, a significant increment after minimal load changes occurred in IRPs in the second half of 2025.

Of companies that updated IRPs in the first half of 2026, the most significant example of load growth came from Sierra Pacific Power and Nevada Power, who submit an IRP jointly as NV Energy. Sierra Pacific power expects to double its electricity demand in the next four years, and more than quadruple in size by the end of its study period (2045). By that time, the company expects over 80% of its electricity demand to come from data centers.

Exhibit 2

Capacity

Current planned capacity in IRPs across the United States (Exhibit 3) includes 221 GW of wind and solar additions, 104 GW of gas additions, and 69 GW of coal retirements from the end of 2024 to the end of 2035.

Compared to utility plans at the end of 2025, this reflects 8 GW less wind and solar capacity, 8 GW of additional gas capacity, and 4 GW less coal retirements than previously planned.

Planned battery capacity additions have increased from 66 GW at the end of 2024, to 74 GW at the end of 2025, to 79 GW halfway through 2026.

Exhibit 3

Emissions 

Our latest projections (Exhibit 4) from IRPs halfway through 2026 are that carbon dioxide emissions will be 47% lower than 2005 levels by 2035. This is a higher emissions level than the 49% and 52% we projected at the end of 2025 and 2024 respectively.

Compared to today, we project that the grid planned for 2035 will have lower emissions because of planned coal retirements and wind and solar capacity additions. However, updated utility plans include increased load, decreased wind and solar capacity, and increased gas capacity. Thus, the trend in recent years has been toward less emissions reductions than previously planned.

Exhibit 4

Cumulative metrics 

When considering climate alignment of the US electricity sector or individual utilities, the RMI Engage & Act platform’s key metric is cumulative emissions through 2035. RMI also finds value in metrics of cumulative projected load, which illustrates whether the task of reducing emissions is becoming easier or more difficult for utilities, and cumulative projected emissions intensity, which illustrates if consumers are increasing or decreasing emissions associated with their electricity consumption.

Exhibit 5 shows that across all IRPs in the United States, projected load has increased steadily since the beginning of 2021, accelerating in the first half of 2024, and leveling off in the second half of 2025. Much of the variation can be attributed to the differences in IRP filing timelines of utilities in different states. Even with load increases, projected emissions fell from early 2021 to mid-2023 as higher demand was exceeded by higher wind and solar generation. However, utilities then began the trend that continues of reduced planned wind and solar capacity. Cumulative projected emissions are now the highest they’ve been since before 2021.

Cumulative projected load from 2023 to 2035 is 0.8% higher, cumulative projected emissions are 1.5% higher, and cumulative projected emissions intensity is 0.7% higher now halfway through 2026 than they were at the end of 2025.

Exhibit 5

Exhibit 6 provides an additional view of the direction of IRPs, by considering percentage change in cumulative projected load and emissions among the set of companies that did update their IRPs each quarter. Utilities that updated IRPs in the first half of 2026 increased load by 3.0%, emissions by 5.5%, and emissions intensity by 2.5%.

Exhibit 6

Solutions that can scale

Recent utility plans have taken several steps to improve processes and methods to solve for utility priorities of cost, reliability, and climate impact with fast, affordable, flexible solutions.

Emerging technologies for clean firm energy are increasingly being considered and modeled with detail as available resources in utility planning models. A few utilities do make use of these technologies in their plans, with examples including transition from gas to hydrogen (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power), small modular reactor additions (Appalachian Power, PacifiCorp), and long-duration storage additions (Otter Tail Power, NV Energy, PacifiCorp).

Non-generation solutions were also included in several IRPs in the first half of 2026.

• Advanced transmission technologies such as reconductoring (NV Energy), STATCOMs (Evergy Metro), and dynamic line ratings (Dominion South Carolina) were all included in utility plans to make more use of existing transmission lines.
• Virtual power plants (NV Energy) and expanded demand response programs (Evergy Metro) were incorporated to provide reliability on a much more rapid timeline than development of new power plants.
• Clean repowering of existing power plant sites with battery storage (Evergy Metro) and solar (Otter Tail Power Co.) was proposed by multiple utilities to enable rapid connection of new zero-carbon capacity to the grid.

Solutions like these are critical in this moment of transition for utilities, and are likely to expand and become even more common as utilities continue to update IRPs in the future.

Methodology

Historical data in this article comes from the RMI Utility Transition Hub. Projected capacity and total generation (load) are based on data collected manually from IRPs by EQ Research, with RMI corrections, combined with historical data. Generation by technology is calculated with assumed continuation of trends in capacity factors for each company and technology and is converted to emissions using utility-specific emissions factors by technology.