ORNL releases 2026 US Hydropower Market Report

The Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has released the 2026 edition of the U.S. Hydropower Market Report, providing updated statistics and analysis of trends in conventional hydropower and pumped storage hydropower (PSH). The report primarily examines developments through the end of 2025, with selected updates from 2026, in areas including fleet capacity, investment, ownership, licensing, project development, plant performance, electricity markets and the supply chain.

By bringing these data together, the report gives hydropower owners, developers, researchers, policymakers and industry organizations a consistent resource for tracking changes in the fleet, evaluating development and modernization activity, comparing project and licensing timelines and understanding market and manufacturing conditions.

Among its headline findings, the new edition reports that average annual U.S. PSH gross generation increased by 12 percent in 2023-2025 compared with the previous three years. For the first time in the report's series, proposed PSH capacity in the global development pipeline also exceeded proposed conventional hydropower capacity. At the end of 2025, PSH supplied 82 percent of U.S. utility-scale energy storage capacity because of its longer storage durations. For more information, readers can review highlighted statistics and trends from DOE's Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office or access the full report.

ORNL researchers Rocío Uría-Martínez and Megan M. Johnson led development of the 2026 edition. ORNL has authored every edition since DOE commissioned the laboratory to develop the report in 2014, addressing the lack of a comprehensive, regularly updated data source on the U.S. hydropower market. The first edition was published in 2015, followed by editions in 2018, 2021, 2023 and 2026, with data updates released in intervening years.

ORNL combines longstanding hydropower expertise with advanced computational capabilities and experience managing large national datasets to produce the report. Research across the laboratory's Water Power Program addresses many of its subjects, including hydropower resource potential, project development and plant performance.

Uría-Martínez has led the Hydropower Market Report since its inception in 2014. An economist by training, she joined ORNL after working as an energy-market analyst. Her research examines how economics, electricity markets, regulation and energy-system performance shape hydropower development. In 2024, industry peers recognized that work by naming her one of four recipients of a Women with Hydro Vision award.

Johnson brings a complementary perspective as a senior data scientist. She develops the workflows that transform information from numerous sources into consistent, quality-controlled datasets. Together, Johnson and Uría-Martínez use those data to identify and interpret changes in the hydropower market.

That combination allows the researchers to test common assumptions about the industry against long-running data.

"There has been a lot of concern that license surrenders mean the country is losing a significant amount of hydropower capacity," Uría-Martínez said. "But when we look at the data, the capacity added through modernization and new projects is greater than what has been lost."

The report draws on public records and commercial data, including information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. It also uses ORNL data products such as the Existing Hydropower Assets Plant Database, U.S. Hydropower Development Pipeline Data, U.S. Hydropower Relicensing and License Surrender Dataset and U.S. Hydropower Supply Chain Manufacturing Locations. Many of these ORNL data products are publicly available through HydroSource.

"Regulators and DOE staff use the report and its data daily to find high-level figures and key metrics for reporting and responding to questions," Johnson said. "Industry users can also see who is developing projects, what size those projects are and how long licensing can take."

In addition to the full report, readers can explore major findings through the interactive U.S. Hydropower Market Report story map.

DOE's Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office funded the report. ORNL researchers Erik Schmidt, Gbadebo Oladosu, Yu Ma and Shih-Chieh Kao contributed to the 2026 edition.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. - Galen Fader