Berkeley Lab’s 2026 Queued Up report counted more than 2,060 gigawatts of proposed generation and storage seeking grid connection at the end of 2025. Active queue volume had fallen by 10 percent from the previous year. That decline was not simply a measure of projects moving into service: withdrawals and fewer new requests also contributed.[1]
The report found that projects completed in 2025 had spent a median of more than five years between interconnection request and commercial operation in the regions with available data. It also identified 549 gigawatts with draft or executed interconnection agreements that had not yet reached operation.[1]
An agreement is therefore a milestone, not a supply forecast. A queue lists proposals at different stages, with different financing, equipment and construction risks. Treating the total as future available power ignores those distinctions.
The report’s long-run completion figures reinforce that point: most requested capacity never becomes an operating plant. For assessing whether electricity supply can keep pace with new demand, the more useful question is which projects have cleared the remaining constraints—not simply how many gigawatts entered the queue.[1]
Sources & further reading
Original reporting and research behind this article.
- Berkeley Lab: Queued Up, 2026 editionJun 1, 2026