BloombergNEF: U.S. energy storage market resilient amid global growth
- Analysis Energy Storage Storage Markets & Tariffs
Marin Holt
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- 7 minutes read
- 2026 global storage forecast: 123 GW / 360 GWh, 33% above 2025 (BloombergNEF)
- 2025 installed: 112 GW / 307 GWh, up 48% YoY, first 100 GW year
- 10-year cumulative: ~2 TW / 7.3 TWh by 2034-36, ~23% annual growth (BNEF)
- Market share 2025: China 54%, U.S. 16% of global additions
- July 2025 U.S. budget law preserved storage ITC into the 2030s; April 2025 tariffs rolled back
BloombergNEF projects global energy storage additions will reach 123 GW / 360 GWh in 2026, 33% above 2025, and named China and the United States as the markets carrying that growth despite a year of tariff and policy turbulence, the research firm said in its 2026 outlook published January 28, 2026.
The 2026 forecast
BloombergNEF’s 2026 figure of 123 GW / 360 GWh excludes pumped hydropower and represents a 33% increase over the firm’s 2025 estimate of roughly 92 GW / 247 GWh, itself up 22.7% on 2024. The trajectory extends a multi-year acceleration: annual additions climbed from about 10 GW earlier in the decade to 112 GW installed in 2025, a 48% jump year over year that pushed the market past the 100 GW threshold for the first time. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry accounted for more than 90% of 2025 additions, with non-lithium chemistries expected to expand in 2026, concentrated in China.
Why the U.S. market held
U.S. resilience surprised analysts after a volatile 2025. Tariffs imposed in April 2025 were subsequently rolled back, and July 2025 budget legislation preserved investment tax credits for storage installation and manufacturing into the 2030s, removing the largest near-term demand risk. “We are still confident about the growth globally, especially in China and the U.S., despite some policy changes and hurdles earlier in the year,” said Isshu Kikuma, senior associate for energy storage at BloombergNEF. He added that “market players are quickly adapting to a new environment despite policy headwinds.” Foreign-equipment sourcing restrictions taking effect in 2026 remain the primary U.S. deployment constraint.
The 10-year curve
Over the next decade BloombergNEF expects cumulative installed energy storage to grow about 23% annually and reach 2 TW / 7.3 TWh, a roughly 12-fold increase from the 2024 total. China supplied 54% of 2025 global additions and the United States 16%, with Australia posting nearly a sixfold deployment rise. The solar-to-battery pairing ratio has compressed from 56 MW of solar per 1 MW of battery in 2016 to about 6:1 in 2025, with BNEF projecting 4:1 in 2026 as standalone and co-located storage economics converge.
Critical perspective
BloombergNEF’s outlook is a demand forecast, not an installed-base count, and concentration is the unstated risk: with China at 54% of additions and LFP at more than 90% of chemistry, a single supply-chain or policy shock in one country or one cell format would propagate across the entire global number. The 2026 U.S. figure also assumes the rolled-back April 2025 tariffs stay rolled back and that the new foreign-sourcing restrictions do not bite harder than modeled, both political variables outside BNEF’s control. Kikuma’s own framing, that players are “adapting” to “headwinds,” concedes the base case depends on continued policy stability that 2025 did not deliver.
Critical Perspective
BloombergNEF’s forecast of 123 GW/360 GWh in 2026 is impressive, yet it fails to account for the fundamental engineering constraints of grid-tied storage at scale. According to Oracle KB, only systems interconnecting at 20 MW or more under IEEE 1547-2018 Category B can provide reliable voltage and frequency regulation—yet even these systems face significant testing hurdles like UL 9540A thermal-runaway propagation tests. The U.S. has only 16% of global additions, with the bulk of storage still in China at 54%. This suggests a massive scale-up is required to meet the forecasted demand. However, Watt-Logic’s analysis from November 2025 reveals that even today’s installed capacity of 7 GW (with just 147.39 GWhrs) is questionable, let alone scaling up to 123 GW by 2026. The question remains: can the U.S. meet this forecast without a fundamental overhaul of its grid infrastructure and testing standards that ensure reliability at such large scales?
Why it matters
Storage is now the swing variable in grid planning. At 123 GW / 360 GWh in a single year, batteries are being added faster than most interconnection queues and reliability models assumed, reshaping capacity markets, renewable firming, and peak-demand economics. For U.S. utilities and developers, BNEF’s read is that the policy floor set by the July 2025 tax-credit extension matters more than the tariff noise above it.
