The Clean Energy Development Project is an independent research initiative. We examine the operating layer of development — the processes, information and coordination that determine whether a project reaches commercial operation.
America's clean-energy buildout is creating an extraordinary development challenge. Projects require coordination across technology, capital, infrastructure, regulation, land, customers and communities — often over development cycles measured in years.
Yet much of what happens inside development organizations remains invisible from traditional market statistics. Installed capacity and pipeline totals tell you what got built. They do not tell you how decisions were made, where months were lost, or which information never reached the person who needed it.
The Clean Energy Development Project was created to study that operating layer, and to do so in the developers' own words.
Clean Energy Development Operations is the set of people, processes, information systems, workflows and stakeholder interactions required to move a clean-energy project from opportunity through development and toward commercial operation.
We use the phrase as a working definition for what this research studies, and we are open about its limits: it describes a layer practitioners already live in, not a concept we invented. The definition will be refined as the evidence accumulates.
State of Clean Energy Development Operations 2026Six lines of inquiry organize the work. Each one is pursued through executive interviews and project-level research in parallel.
How opportunities are identified, evaluated and prioritized — and where qualification breaks down.
Land, engineering, permitting, interconnection, milestones, dependencies and internal handoffs.
RFPs, proposals, PPAs, customer requirements, procurement and commercial documentation.
How information moves among utilities, regulators, landowners, offtakers, EPCs, suppliers, capital providers and communities.
What systems development organizations actually use — and where automation and AI are entering the work.
What executives would change, what they would automate, and where they insist humans remain in control.
Every claim is labeled verified fact, participant statement, CEDP analysis or CEDP inference.
Read the research methodologyProject-level U.S. queue records are assembled and resolved to the organizations bringing projects forward. Our initial universe is 6,735 active solar and battery-storage project records. Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up 2026; CEDP analysis. Data through year-end 2025.
Market structure, interconnection context and technology conditions are reviewed against published sources.
Primary conversations with founders, CEOs and development leaders form the core of the research.
Development footprint, technologies, markets and organizational structure are documented per organization.
Interview findings are compared across organizations and markets to identify patterns rather than anecdotes.
Founder, Clean Energy Development Project
Commercial relationships, where they exist, are disclosed under the editorial policy.
Eric Christenson is an entrepreneur and business development executive with experience bringing emerging technologies into complex commercial environments.
More than a decade ago, Eric served as Head of Business Development at ET Water, working at the intersection of water conservation, connected technology and IoT-based smart irrigation. His work included business development with large financial institutions and Fortune 500 retailers deploying smart irrigation technology across large commercial property portfolios.
That experience gave Eric an early view into a challenge that remains central to sustainability and infrastructure technology today: successful deployment depends on much more than the technology itself. It requires coordination among customers, vendors, operators, decision-makers, physical assets, data and established business processes.
Eric later continued building and working with technology-driven businesses across sales, marketing, business development and go-to-market strategy.
He founded the Clean Energy Development Project to study that operating layer within today's clean-energy industry — how solar, energy-storage and renewable-infrastructure organizations move projects from opportunity toward commercial operation.
CEDP combines project-level market intelligence with structured research and conversations with founders, CEOs, development executives and industry leaders to examine development operations, stakeholder coordination, information systems, technology and the emerging role of artificial intelligence.
The objective is not to promote a particular technology, but to better understand how America's clean-energy development organizations actually operate — and where better systems and processes may help projects move forward more effectively.
There is no sponsored placement or paid inclusion. Participation in the research does not guarantee an interview or publication.
Interview selection, corrections, participant permissions and disclosure of commercial relationships are governed by the project's editorial policy. Read the editorial policy.
Development executives can put their perspective forward for consideration in the current research.
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