2026-07-08T18:30:00.000Z
The IEA cut its own five-year renewable capacity forecast by 5% in October 2025, and almost the entire cut landed on one country. Kaiso Research's primary dataset puts the global renewable energy market at USD 1,605 billion in 2025, climbing to USD 6,549.80 billion by 2035 at a 15.1% CAGR. That is not a modest forecast. It is a market more than quadrupling in a decade, and the United States forecast inside it was cut by nearly half. Asia-Pacific still commands 41.51% of global market revenue in 2025, and that share is not eroding. What looks like a global slowdown on the surface is a regional one wearing a global forecast as a disguise, and a CFO who reads only the headline CAGR will miss where the actual capital is moving.
Asia-Pacific's 41.51% Share Is Not a Trend. It Is a Cost Structure.
Asia-Pacific held 41.51% of global renewable energy market revenue in 2025, and that share rests on manufacturing economics rather than policy generosity, per Kaiso Research's primary dataset. China alone added 277 GW of solar capacity and 80 GW of wind capacity in 2024, a single-year build-out that pushed the country's cumulative solar and wind capacity past 1,400 GW and let it hit its 2030 renewable target six years early. India's forecast moved up nearly 10% on record 2024 auction volume for onshore wind and utility-scale solar, backed by a new rooftop PV incentive program and faster permitting for pumped storage hydropower. Neither country needed a subsidy surge to get here.
Solar energy captured 31.61% of 2025 revenue by source, and the industrial end-use segment took 61.36% of the total, and those two figures explain who is actually buying this capacity. Manufacturers, data center operators, and heavy industry are not installing solar photovoltaics, wind, hydropower, and bioenergy because a compliance officer asked them to. The IEA's Renewables 2025 report found that global capacity additions are set to nearly double their 2019 to 2024 pace through 2030, with solar PV alone accounting for close to 80% of that growth. That is not a subsidy story. It's a procurement story, and procurement stories do not reverse when a single country's tax credit expires.
Iberdrola, Ørsted, and Siemens Gamesa Anchor Utility-Scale Europe While Tata Power and Suzlon Fight for the Distributed Edge
Iberdrola S.A. commissioned Solara Ultra, a 500 MW solar photovoltaic plant, in Extremadura, Spain in March 2025, and Kaiso Research tracks it as one of Europe's largest single solar installations. The plant supplies clean electricity to more than 250,000 households annually and avoids nearly 300,000 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, according to Kaiso Research's primary dataset on recent renewable energy developments. Acciona S.A. and Enel S.p.A. run comparable utility-scale portfolios across Spain, Italy, and Latin America. All three developers now compete less on panel cost than on how fast they can move a project through permitting.
That permitting bottleneck is precisely what the IEA flagged when it warned that competitive tenders, rather than fixed feed-in tariffs, now determine roughly 60% of new global renewable capacity awards. This shift rewards developers with balance sheets large enough to bid aggressively and absorb multi-year construction timelines. In Europe, Ørsted, Iberdrola, and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy S.A. are expanding North Sea offshore wind projects across Spain, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands, backed by the EU Green Deal's climate neutrality commitment and REPowerEU's energy security financing. EU-27 renewable investment rose 63% in the first half of 2025 as capital reallocated away from US markets amid policy uncertainty.
In the United States, Xcel Energy Inc. operates in a market shaped as much by corporate offtake as by utility procurement. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google secured tens of gigawatts of renewable electricity through long-term power purchase agreements in 2025 to power AI data centre infrastructure, per Kaiso Research's tracked deal data. This buyer segment barely existed at scale five years ago, and it now shapes where new US capacity gets sited.
On the equipment and grid-integration side, ABB Ltd., Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, and Schneider Electric are positioning around getting variable renewable output onto grids that were not built for it. Suzlon Energy Ltd. and Tata Power hold strong positions in India's wind and distributed solar segments respectively, while Invenergy LLC and Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. concentrate on project development across North America. General Electric supplies turbines into both Europe's offshore wind buildout and Asia-Pacific's onshore expansion, and none of these eleven Kaiso-tracked companies compete on identical terms.
Three Forces Are Driving the 15.1% CAGR, and Only One of Them Needs a Government to Show Up
Solar PV, wind, hydropower, and bioenergy have become the cheapest way to add new electricity generation across most of the world, and that cost advantage is the primary force behind the 15.1% CAGR from 2026 through 2035. Global investment in solar PV reached a record USD 554 billion in 2024, a 49% increase from the prior year, according to IRENA data tracked in Kaiso Research's primary dataset. Battery factory investment nearly doubled to USD 74 billion over the same period. Combined investment in renewables, grid systems, and batteries surpassed fossil fuel investment for the first time in 2024, a structural turning point rather than a cyclical one.
The second force is AI infrastructure demand, and it behaves nothing like a traditional demand driver. Hyperscalers contracting tens of gigawatts through long-term PPAs create a commercially reliable offtake market that operates independently of government auction cycles. That independence is the point: it gives developers bankability even when a national subsidy program stalls or a permitting office falls behind schedule. The United States recorded 29.5 GW of corporate clean energy PPAs in 2025, and Kaiso Research's primary dataset attributes a large share of that volume to Microsoft, Amazon, and Google expanding AI-powered data centre capacity.
The third force is the one that actually needs government cooperation, and it's the one lagging. Permitting delays, grid interconnection backlogs, and policy uncertainty are the binding constraint on deployment, not financing or technology. The IEA's 5% downward revision to its 2025-2030 global forecast traces almost entirely to permitting friction and policy reversals concentrated in one market. Competitive tenders now account for roughly 60% of gross capacity additions worldwide, up sharply from a market still dominated by fixed feed-in tariffs a few years ago.
China Hit Its 2030 Target Six Years Early. The US Cut Its Own Forecast in Half.
China commissioned 357 GW of combined wind and solar capacity in 2024 and met its 2030 renewable target six years ahead of schedule, a scale of build-out that has no precedent among individual countries. The shift from fixed feed-in tariffs to competitive auctions in China is changing project economics and timelines, but the country still accounts for roughly 60% of global capacity additions. India's 2025 renewable forecast rose nearly 10% on record 2024 auction volumes, a new rooftop PV incentive scheme, and faster permitting for pumped storage hydropower.
The IEA's Middle East and North Africa forecast rose 23% due to faster-than-expected solar development in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE are scaling green hydrogen infrastructure under their respective Vision 2030 and Net Zero by 2050 strategies. Chile's solar market is expanding rapidly and Brazil maintains an active onshore wind pipeline, though curtailment risk threatens to cancel some utility-scale Latin American projects. Meanwhile the United States saw its IEA-tracked renewables outlook cut by almost half, driven by tax credit phase-outs, new import restrictions, an offshore wind leasing moratorium, and permitting slowdowns on federal land. Renewable energy still accounted for 90% of newly built US capacity in the first half of 2025, with solar and storage contributing 83% of that figure, even as US renewable investment fell 36% over the same period.
Solar's 31.61% Share Rests on a Cost Curve No Other Source Can Match
Solar energy led every other source with a 31.61% revenue share in 2025 and is projected to remain the dominant source through the full forecast period, per Kaiso Research's primary dataset. The technology's advantage compounds across three dimensions simultaneously. Solar has the steepest cost decline of any generation technology, the shortest construction timeline of any utility-scale power source, and the widest deployment range, running from residential rooftops to 500 MW utility installations in the same product category. No competing source matches that combination.
Offshore wind is the technology to watch on the margin. Annual offshore wind additions are forecast to grow from 9.2 GW in 2024 to more than 37 GW by 2030, with China accounting for roughly half of that increase and North Sea expansion accelerating across Europe. Pumped storage hydropower additions are set to double to 16.5 GW annually by 2030, addressing the long-duration storage gap that high renewable penetration creates. Green hydrogen paired with long-duration energy storage is emerging as the mechanism developers are testing to solve seasonal intermittency across Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
ABB, Siemens Gamesa, and Schneider Electric Are Racing to Own the Grid-Integration Layer
The competitive question in this market is no longer who builds the cheapest panel. It's who can get variable renewable output onto a grid that wasn't designed to absorb it at this scale. Battery energy storage systems paired with solar and wind projects are becoming standard components of grid-integration bids across Germany, Spain, and Poland, and ABB Ltd., Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, and Schneider Electric are positioning their equipment portfolios around exactly that problem.
Suzlon Energy Ltd. dominates in Indian onshore wind while Tata Power leads in distributed solar deployment, and the two companies are not fighting for the same customer despite sharing a home market. Invenergy LLC and Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. concentrate on North American project development, competing on land acquisition speed and interconnection queue position rather than equipment cost. Acciona S.A., Enel S.p.A., and General Electric round out a field where scale and permitting expertise, not technology differentiation, now decide who wins the next auction cycle.
Corporate PPA Volume Fell 10% Globally in 2025. Big Tech's Share of It Grew Anyway.
Global corporate clean energy PPA volume fell to 55.9 GW in 2025, down 10% from the record 62 GW signed in 2024, the first annual decline in nearly a decade. The United States was the exception that mattered. It hosted a record 29.5 GW of corporate PPA deals in 2025, and Kaiso Research's primary dataset ties that volume directly to Microsoft, Amazon, and Google expanding AI-powered data centre infrastructure. Global investment in renewable energy reached USD 386 billion in the first half of 2025 alone, a 10% year-over-year increase, with offshore wind investment hitting USD 39 billion in six months, already surpassing all of 2024's USD 31 billion total.
This is a smaller field of buyers doing much bigger deals. The number of unique corporate PPA buyers in the US contracted sharply even as total volume climbed, which means bankability for new US renewable projects now concentrates around a handful of hyperscaler balance sheets rather than a broad base of corporate offtakers.
The US Cut Its Own Renewable Forecast in Half While China Kept Building
The Foreign Entity of Concern procurement policy in the United States targets entities tied to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea through ownership, control, or jurisdiction, and it is forcing a supply chain reorganization for every solar module manufacturer serving the US market. Developers stockpiled 35 GW of solar modules between 2023 and mid-2024 in anticipation of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations, a hedge that only makes sense if you expect the regulatory environment to keep tightening. Tax credit phase-outs, an offshore wind leasing moratorium, and slower permitting on federal land compounded the effect through 2025.
China's own policy shift, from fixed feed-in tariffs to competitive auctions, is reshaping project economics without slowing volume. India's rooftop PV incentive program and faster pumped storage permitting moved the country's 2025 forecast up nearly 10%. The regulatory asymmetry here is the story: one major market tightened financing conditions for renewables in 2025, and the other two kept opening auction pipelines.
What CFOs, Industrial Buyers, and Equipment Suppliers Should Do With This Data
For industrial buyers and manufacturers, the 61.36% share held by the industrial end-use segment in 2025 signals that renewable procurement has moved from a sustainability line item to a core input-cost decision. Steel, cement, and chemical producers electrifying with solar PV, biomass, and wind are not chasing a compliance target. They are locking in a cost structure that grid-purchased power in most regions can no longer match, and mid-market manufacturers still buying power on spot contracts will absorb a widening cost gap against competitors who have already signed a PPA.
For CFOs and investment committees, the geographic split matters more than the global CAGR. Capital deployed into Asia-Pacific manufacturing and project development is riding a cost curve; capital deployed into US greenfield projects is riding a policy cycle that just got materially less favorable. Equipment suppliers serving grid-integration, particularly in battery storage and offshore wind hardware, face a market where Europe and China are both expanding faster than most 2024-era forecasts assumed, while the US pipeline for 2026 through 2028 will be thinner than it looked eighteen months ago.
Three Structural Risks Sit Underneath the 15.1% CAGR
The first risk is geopolitical concentration. China's dominant position across solar PV manufacturing, rare earth minerals, and battery components means any further escalation in trade restrictions could disrupt supply chains for developers well beyond the US market that FEOC policy directly targets. The second risk is grid capacity itself. Permitting and interconnection backlogs, not capital availability, are now the binding constraint on deployment speed across multiple major markets simultaneously, and that bottleneck does not resolve on the same timeline as a financing decision.
The third risk is buyer concentration in the corporate PPA market. A shrinking number of hyperscaler buyers now underwrite an outsized share of new US project bankability, and that concentration means a single company's capital expenditure pullback could stall a meaningful slice of the development pipeline. This is impressive momentum, but it also creates a fragility that most project finance models built on 2024 assumptions have not stress-tested.
The 2026-2035 Window Rewards Whoever Solves Permitting First
The forecast arc from USD 1,605 billion in 2025 to USD 6,549.80 billion by 2035 assumes that Asia-Pacific's manufacturing advantage, corporate PPA demand from AI infrastructure buildouts, and offshore wind expansion in Europe and China continue on their current trajectories. That assumption holds up well against the data Kaiso Research is tracking today. What doesn't hold up is any assumption that the United States regains the share it is currently ceding, because permitting reform moves on a legislative timeline, not a market one. The next five years belong to whichever jurisdiction fixes its interconnection queue first.
The Market Is Not Slowing Down. One Country Is.
Kaiso Research's primary dataset shows a global renewable energy market on track to more than quadruple by 2035, and that trajectory does not depend on any single government's cooperation to hold. Asia-Pacific's 41.51% share, solar's 31.61% lead by source, and the industrial segment's 61.36% dominance by end use all point to the same conclusion: this market is now driven by cost economics and corporate procurement, not subsidy cycles. The United States is the one major economy actively working against that trajectory, and the IEA's near-50% downgrade to its own outlook is the clearest evidence available that the retreat is self-inflicted. Executives allocating capital against this market in 2026 are not choosing between growth and no growth. They're choosing which half of the world gets it.
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About Kaiso Research and Consulting
Kaiso Research and Consulting is a global market intelligence firm publishing 5,000+ research reports across 11+ industry verticals.
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Isha Paliwal, Lead Industry Analyst, Kaiso Research and Consulting | Covering renewable and clean energy markets across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America
Published: 2026-07-04 | Report Code: EPGA1343
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