At this time of year, you can find plenty of people offering predictions for the coming year. Each year, my favorite set of predictions (energy nerd that I am) comes from three energy experts that get together each January on the Redefining Energy podcast to assess their predictions of the previous year and make new ones for the coming year.

The three are:  

  • Michael Barnard, Canadian energy consultant and writer. His posts on cleantech.com are among my favorite resources for checking on the reality of climate-related technology.
  • Gerard Reid, energy expert and financier (https://gerardreid.com/)
  • Laurent Segalen, clean energy investment banker. With Gerard Reid, he is co-host of the Redefining Energy podcast.

It is always interesting to read their predictions and then see what transpires during the ensuing year.

You can read (or listen to) the whole discussion here.

If you’re like me, you may want to skip the discussion of last year’s predictions, which take up a bit more than half of the article. The most interesting part is the part about the year ahead. There are six specific predictions, with each participant making two. [My comments on the predictions are in square brackets.]

Michael Barnard’s first prediction for 2026 has to do with batteries. He predicts bulk battery storage for the grid will be available in China at $40 per kWh this year. Is that a big deal? It sure is, because that’s a drop of 60% from the price in December. [The prediction applies specifically to China, but the US won’t be far behind. As big batteries get installed, they will increasingly displace natural gas “peaker” plants.] Barnard expects the dominant battery technology will be “LFP” [lithium iron phosphate, which avoids use of problematic materials such as cobalt and nickel].

Laurent Segalen expects a collapse of the data-center bubble this year. He predicts at least 50% of the data centers that have been announced will never get built. No one will be willing to finance them. Michael Barnard agrees, and says “there’s bloodshed coming in the American economy” this year. Gerard Reid is in general agreement, but thinks the collapse will not happen until 2027.

Gerard Reid predicts lower global wind and solar installations in 2026 than we had in 2025. The obstacles to growth—grid bottlenecks, permitting, financing costs, curtailment where there is too much solar—have gotten to the point that growth will not be possible. Michael Barnard agrees, mainly because China, which installs far more solar than any other country, will be installing 100GW less solar next year (from 300GW last year down to 200GW this year.)  

Because China will still have the capacity to make 300GW of panels, Barnard predicts that it will export huge numbers of panels. He expects Africa to be an important market, which it has not been in the past. Only 2.5GW of solar was installed in Africa in 2025, but Michael expects enormous growth in African solar, to 20GW (an 8-fold increase) in the coming year.

[For context: a 1GW solar installation is roughly equivalent to a midsize fossil-fuel power plant.]

Laurent Segalen’s next prediction is that the fight over the Greenhouse Gas Protocol will get ugly this year. There is a new version of this voluntary standard being discussed, and it would require large users of electricity to match renewable generation with electricity use on an hour-by-hour basis if they wish to make a “sustainability” claim. (Right now, only annual matching is required.) Amazon and Meta are aggressively fighting the new version, but most of the other large industry participants are supportive.  

Gerard Reid’s last prediction is about liquified natural gas (LNG). Exports of LNG have been a huge growth industry in the US, and there is a lot more export infrastructure under construction. But Gerard Reid believes “the golden days of LNG are over.” There will be a glut, and “we’ll start to see the restructuring of that industry” in 2026. [If he is right “restructuring” is a mild term for what will happen. Billions of dollars are being invested, based on the assumption of rapid LNG growth.]

Each of these six predictions contradicts something that either politicians or energy companies (or both) have been saying. We’ll see how the predictions fare in the coming year. Past predictions by these three experts have often—but certainly not always—been quite accurate.