Global renewable energy investments plateaued in the first half of 2026 amid uncertainty and policy changes, with a bright spot: co-located solar and storage.

Renewables investments reached US$327.5 billion in the first six months of this year, on par with the previous six months, but down 21% from the peak in the second half of 2024, BNEF data revealed in August. “The numbers show that the broader growth story for renewables remains intact despite policy changes in key markets like the United States and China.”

Tighter scrutiny of revenue risk weighed on stand-alone projects, writes BNEF. Financing for stand-alone utility-scale solar fell 20% year-on-year amid concerns about curtailment, price cannibalization, and grid congestion. Offshore wind investment fell 72% after poor auction results and higher costs.

Investors favoured projects with co-located solar and energy storage, which received a record $25 billion investment, or about triple that of the first half of 2025. The U.S. and Australia led these investments.

“As renewables output rises, it is depressing power prices during the hours that it generates,” Meredith Annex, BNEF’s head of clean power, told The Energy Mix. “This means the electricity is less valuable— and storage allows those assets to move the electricity to the highest-priced hours where the system needs it most.”

Battery storage overall is booming in the U.S., where the power sector added more grid-scale capacity in 2026’s second quarter than in any other quarter ever, Canary Media reported.

That success will not automatically translate north of the border in Canada, PV Magazine wrote earlier this year.

Canada must account for lower temperatures that can affect battery performance, and developers here also stand to learn from the U.S. market to avoid problems with supply chains, commissioning, and public support.

For the renewables sector as a whole, BNEF writes that less new capacity will be added in 2026 than in 2025—the first year-on-year decline in more than a decade. But the setback is expected to be temporary, with new additions rising again in 2027.

Still, global renewable energy deployment is lagging the commitment made by more than 100 countries at the 2023 COP28 summit in Dubai, which called for tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, finds an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) report released at Climate Week NYC. That means average capacity additions must almost double between now and the end of the decade. Though the projected gap to meeting the target has narrowed, deployment is still falling short by an average 1.2 terawatts of capacity per year through 2030.

“Delivering this scale of deployment would mark a major structural shift in the global power system,” the report states.

IRENA urges policymakers at the upcoming COP31 climate summit to commit to upgrading grids, deploying efficient electric technologies, boosting renewables capacity, and using artificial intelligence to improve electricity system operations.