SEIA's 11GW solar quarter includes starts rushed forward to beat a July 4 credit deadline

A site selection team sorting counties for a 2028 campus will read the top-ten list as a ranking of where power gets built fastest, though it ranks something narrower. Tim Pawlenty, SEIA's chief executive and a former Republican governor of Minnesota, credited more available land and easier permitting for energy projects in Republican-leaning states ^[7]. "Red states, as a general proposition, have sort of a pro-build mentality. They want to build things," Pawlenty said ^[6]. The same business environment has drawn manufacturing and data centers, and with them demand for cheap generation that goes up quickly ^[8].

The 11 gigawatts is a quarterly total. Back out the year-over-year gain and the second quarter of 2025 comes to about 7.6 gigawatts, which leaves a rise near 3.4 gigawatts ^[18][19]. The red-state share of that rise is about 2.5 gigawatts ^[20]. Starts pulled forward to beat the tax credit cutoff sit inside that 3.4, and SEIA attributes part of the bump to them ^[10].

The residential end of the market is already moving the other way. Rooftop solar has begun declining in 2026, the report says ^[11].

Michigan is the case that tests whether the ranking travels. It voted for Trump in 2024. Its governor and state Senate are Democratic, and state law requires utilities to generate 50 percent of their power from renewables by 2030 ^[13]. Gizmodo reported that the mandate, together with data center electricity demand, is likely a large factor in the state's climb ^[22]. Michigan also lacks Texas's year-round strong sunlight ^[16]. Michael Craig, an associate professor in the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, said solar farms may stay economically feasible without the credits only in areas with the right weather ^[15]. "The economics of solar largely depends on your solar resource," said Craig. "The better the resource, I'd say the less important the tax credits are." ^[14]

For a compute footprint, the sort that survives the credit expiry has two axes: the quality of the solar resource near the substation you want, and whether local demand for renewables is written into law. Texas has both the sunlight and the load, and it has ranked first in 2024, 2025 and the first half of 2026 ^[4]. Michigan has the load and the mandate and the weaker resource. Indiana, Ohio and Arizona have held top-ten spots since 2024 without a headline mandate ^[17].

Pawlenty's own framing is careful. "At least at the macro level, Republican-led and governed states are not only open to but embracing solar energy as a technology," he said ^[5]. The federal picture is the opposite direction: the administration has made building on federal land harder, and Congress cut back the credits ^[21]. So the question for a 2028 plan is which input the nearby pipeline runs on. Sunlight does not change. Permitting speed is a state choice, and a renewables mandate is one a legislature can revisit.