The renewable energy conversation has long focused on what we need to build next. But as the first wave of solar assets begins to age, what we do with what’s already been built is becoming just as important. Decom Solar Co-Founder Jerry D’Arco responds to Wood Mackenzie’s Renewing Renewables report and the growing role of repowering in the next phase of the energy transition.
There’s a part of the energy transition that doesn’t get talked about enough: the equipment we’ve installed over the last 15 years is starting to age out.
Governments set renewable targets in megawatts but rarely account for capacity coming offline. Wood Mackenzie’s new Renewing Renewables report shows why that matters. Without repowering, annual new solar and wind installations would actually decline. With it, decommissioning and replacement will drive 23% of solar buildout in the 2040s, and equipment sales in 2050 will be more than 60% higher than today.
The timing matters too. Electricity demand is climbing fast, much of it from AI and data centers. A new report from Crux and Foundry-Logic estimates that repowering existing U.S. sites could unlock the equivalent of 9.6 GW of new solar by 2030, and that the batteries added along the way could meet about a third of data-center-driven peak demand growth by 2035. All of it on sites that already have land, permits and a grid connection.
In their words, repowering is “one of the few levers that can add meaningful capacity on a timeline of months rather than years.”
For asset owners, that turns end-of-life planning into a strategic decision. The first wave of U.S. solar, built between 2010 and 2016, is approaching 15 years old. Inverters are failing, original PPAs are expiring, and commercial and industrial systems make up more than half of the near-term opportunity.
At Decom Solar, this is the work we do every day: decommissioning existing systems, reinstalling them, and repowering them, often across entire portfolios. The owners who plan for this early will have the most options. If you’re starting to think about what’s next for your sites, reach out and we’d be glad to help.
Both reports are worth the read:
2026
| Decom Solar