Britain Opens Biggest Solar Auction as Ember Says Africa's Real Boom Is Unreported

The auction calendar is doing more work than the auction results. Brazil has added batteries to its capacity auction schedule through 2029, according to ESS News on 1 October, while the UK pushed its own renewables budget notice back on 16 September, as reported by Upstream Online, and now says results will land next year.

On 30 September, Net Zero Investor reported the UK had announced its largest ever solar energy procurement. The same week, Recharge News reported on 1 October that the government's clean power czar had stood down. Neither item came with a full set of numbers, which is itself the story.

Analysts are already modelling what auction reform can deliver. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a nonprofit research group, commissioned analysis of the US Senate's energy permitting bill and found that by 2035 its transmission reforms could cut the cost of delivering electricity by roughly $7 billion against a business-as-usual scenario, a net saving after $1.9 billion in new transmission investment, and cut residential bills by about $1.1 billion. Canary Media reported the figures on 30 September, citing Grid Strategies president Rob Gramlich, who said the bill's policy changes "can get that done".

Africa's missing gigawatts

The gap between what is built and what is counted is widest in Africa. CleanTechnica reported on 2 October that the UK think tank Ember could find official national solar capacity reporting for only 36 of 54 countries, and only 14 of those covered 2025. Ember's answer was to count Chinese exports instead: solar panels shipped to Africa reached 23 GW in the 12 months to June 2026, a 53% rise on the previous 12 months.

"Half of the estimated rise in solar is missing from official statistics, because national reporting is so poor," Ember said, according to CleanTechnica.

That changes the headline number. Ember's 2025 growth estimate is 12.0 GW, twice the 6.2 GW recorded by the International Energy Agency and well above the 4.6 GW from the International Renewable Energy Agency. The think tank expects full-year 2026 installations to rise another 45%, with roughly 20 GW of that from the export pipeline alone.

Official US data shows similar momentum in a market with far better reporting. Electrek reported on 28 September that the Energy Information Administration expects about 82.7 GW of new renewables and battery capacity in the 12 months to July 2027, while total fossil fuel and nuclear capacity falls by more than 1.4 GW. Renewables passed 29% of US generation by the end of July 2026.

The jobs numbers complicate the picture. E2's analysis of Department of Energy data, also reported by Electrek on 28 September, found the US lost 36,949 clean energy jobs in 2025, the first annual decline since the pandemic, erasing nearly 40% of 2024's gains. California shed nearly 21,000. Battery storage and grid work posted small gains.

Auctions elsewhere are still clearing. Germany awarded 480 MW of solar plus storage capacity, according to mvapulse.com on 30 September, and AM Green won the Asian lot in the H2Global auction with a EUR 585 million, 10-year renewable ammonia supply deal for Germany, reported by SolarQuarter, Business Wire and The Times of India. Hydrogen Insight noted on 30 September that full results of four H2Global lots will not be revealed before the end of 2026.

Permits as the bottleneck

In the US, the constraint is moving from auctions to approvals. Canary Media reported on 21 September that North Carolina regulators rejected Duke Energy's 255 MW Richmond County gas plant, a facility estimated at $584 million, saying projected data center load growth was "insufficiently reliable". The order cited the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge.

Local opposition cuts both ways. Canary Media reported on 21 September that Coles County, Illinois, approved a roughly 300 MW wind farm on a 6-5 vote after resident Dorothy Macy testified it would generate over $81 million in taxes across 30 years, including more than $43 million for schools. A separate Canary Media analysis on 25 September found more than 60% of US counties with renewable restrictions are rural, even though utility-scale solar uses just 0.07% of US farmland.

None of this settles the auction question. It reframes it: the procurement rounds are being designed for capacity that reporting systems, in Africa and elsewhere, still cannot see.