On February 27, 2025, Partner Allison Perlman moderated a panel during Infocast’s ERCOT Market Summit 2025 that examined ongoing changes to the renewable energy development landscape within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The panelists shared their perspectives on how changes in siting options, price curves, supply chain conditions, interconnection timelines, financial risk tolerance, and new policies and regulations will impact how projects are accomplished in 2025.
Speakers:
- Sabah Bayatli, President, OCI Energy
- Devin Gaby, Associate Director, Customized Energy Solutions
- John Larkey, Vice President, Power Marketing, National Grid Renewables
- Brooke Malik, Director of Business Development, Lightsource bp
- Tracy Stoddard, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Acciona Energy
In Depth
Top takeaways included:
- Escalating electric power demand from the introduction of data centers, new manufacturing, and the influx of residential customers is driving investment in new renewable generation capacity in ERCOT. However, developers remain hesitant to engage, citing increased uncertainty and risk arising from anticipated federal and state regulatory reform of environmental and permitting regulations, decreased investment in infrastructure and emerging technologies, and potential rollbacks of federal tax credits and other incentives.
- Historically, as other markets faced issues with prices, inflation, and supply chain delays, developers viewed ERCOT as an economically beneficial market due to the absence of such challenges. Now, growing market volatility and regulatory uncertainty present challenges to some developers’ long-term strategy, project financing, and overall outlook on the US and ERCOT market.
- With ERCOT’s evolving permitting and siting requirements, developers’ strategies are shifting to a project-by-project approach to account for potential setbacks and timeline delays. Offtake agreements are also evolving to reflect the increased division of risk between developers and offtakers resulting from regulatory and market uncertainty.
- Despite steep load growth projections for 2025 within ERCOT, proposed state legislative initiatives addressing pricing, real-time co-optimization, and siting will impact how many and what loads remain in the queue.
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