• Scout Clean Energy CEO Michael Rucker gave a 2026 outlook for projects nearing NTP and COD, as well as how the development company is handling M&A transactions and a post-federal tax incentive environment in the latter half of the year.

  Rucker told NPM that Scout’s 180 MW Nimbus Project in Arkansas is mostly constructed and is reaching COD this spring. Scout recently closed the tax equity financing for Nimbus as well.

  “We also closed the construction financing for both of the operating wind farms,” he said. “We are on the cusp of closing the tax equity financing for the Gonzaga project. That should close within a few weeks here.”

  The 140 MW / 50 MW Gonzaga wind and storage project in California, located entirely on public land in Pacheco State Park, is also reaching COD in late spring and already has seen completion of its wind turbines. Scout is currently starting construction on the storage portion of the project.

  Gonzaga also has CleanPowerSF as its offtaker. It is buying both the energy capacity and storage output for the project, with full capacity for both parts of the project. Rucker said that it is a toll agreement for the storage component and a PPA for the wind, which work in tandem.

  He expects that Scout will go out for financing this year.

  “We also plan to start construction on several other projects,” he said, pointing to the Sun Chief solar project in Indiana which is about to reach NTP and is partially in construction now. The project is hybrid with an operating wind farm. “They weren’t built at the same time but used our gen-tie we made to the interconnection that will share that, so it has a shared facility at the substation we built.”

  NPM Interconnection queue data identified the project in Jay County.

  For the 252 MW Silver Queen project in Iowa, Rucker said that it is coming along and that Scout has been waiting for ISOs to sort out affected system studies and restudies.

  “We’ve had signed GIAs but are waiting on the ISO to give a cost,” he said. “That one is a big push for this year and should hit full NTP and construction financing in 3Q26.”

  In the Pacific Northwest, Scout’s 1.1 GW Horse Heaven wind, solar and storage hybrid project received its site certification, which is the state permit after going through the EFSC adjudication.

  However, after receiving site certification, Scout received an appeal for the project from Benton County, Washington, a local opposition group, and the Yakima Tribe.

  “We are confident that we will work through the appeal,” he said. “The grounds for the appeal are narrow. There is no new evidence, no new hearings.”

  Horse Heaven is currently in the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) queue with two interconnection positions.

  “We can’t formally complete the GIAs until we have a formally non-appealable project, so all studies are complete, we’ve been in the queues for a long time,” he said. “Once of the two projects is federalized, which means it’s built out to serve regional load.”

  That construction of a 500 kV interconnection is underway now because it has a long lead time. Rucker said that if Scout were waiting to get that kicked off, it would be delayed past 2030, but since that work is already going on and in BPA’s plan, “we should get it in just fine.”

  Currently Horse Heaven has no PPAs yet and it is too early to lock down costs because the timing of the construction is too variable. However, Rucker pointed to the significant demand in the Pacific Northwest, leading to confidence about the prospects of the project.

  NPM data center data is tracking three planned data centers in Washington state, though news reports from earlier the year indicated that Atlas Agro was also looking into a data center project in Richland, which is in Benton County, where Horse Heaven project is also located.

  Looking elsewhere, he said Scout would love to be in the Virginia market and has solar greenfield assets that will not fall in the federal tax credit period.

  “We would always look for acquisition but there are few, far in between,” he said.

  M&A

  Currently, Scout has about 1.8 GW of M&A projects under exclusivity and multiples of that being considered.

  “It’s a very active market and we have a pretty big team working on M&A,” Rucker said. “Our strategic goals with M&A are multiple. We are not focused on one thesis.”

  The first goal is to find earlier stage projects that have queue positions that can deliver within the credit window that Scout can use to either replace projects that don’t make it through the queues, can’t receive permits or otherwise have development challenges, or can help them diversify and expand.

  Scout is looking at technologies including wind, solar, and storage, though Rucker said wind projects are pretty rare on the market and have a relatively high value.

  “There’s a premium for wind that offsets solar nationwide and from a developer perspective not many companies do it anymore,” he said. “We meet the same people at the table when we compete for a project but very few of them come up, at least in mid-stage when we typically look for M&A.”

  Scout just closed on a solar acquisition earlier this month, though details are not available yet.

  “It has a PPA we negotiated to facilitate it, so that’s another way we enhance the value of our M&A program when we find a mid-stage or early-stage project, we try to improve it or add value to it,” he said.

  He added that early-stage assets that have no window to be interconnected within the credit window are at a discount currently. Ultimately, he said that Scout prefers greenfield projects if they can do it.

  “The main reason is we control every aspect of development, including initial siting,” he explained. “There is less expense for us too if we are successful.”

  Otherwise, he said Scout is not very active in acquiring early-stage pipelines, with the main reason being that they are a few years past 2030 at least and Scout can greenfield its own opportunities.

  Right now, Scout has 22 GW of assets under development in various stages across 22 states. Rucker said that the development company is in about every market except New York, New England, and the Southeast.

  Rucker said this is partly because of the ebbs and flows in terms of interconnection processes. Some issues are currently being seen in the Midwest right now with voltage issues on the grid that will require upgrades that are affecting whole clusters and delay those years.

  “Those will be resolved but those are unexpected hurdles that show up in the course of development and then you have market issues,” he said. “We have very strong incentives in some states like in the Pacific Northwest and California but less so in the middle part of the country.”

  Post-incentive market

  In the US market following the sunsetting federal tax incentives, Rucker – who has been in the industry since the ‘90s – said that it is back to business as usual.

  “We always were working with short-term extensions of the credits, and we would develop into markets we truly didn’t understand the ultimate economics for, which is what we are seeing right now,” he said.

  What has Rucker positive about these markets in the long run is the competitiveness of the technologies versus the alternates. He explained there is no indication that power demand will not be there.

  “It’ll be on some level of the growth curve, but even at the bottom of the expected growth curves it’s more than I’ve seen in my career,” he said. “We had a zero-load growth environment for most of my career.”

  Early on, he said that renewable energy opportunities were in fuel switching and for the first time the industry has a long-term growth market for energy demand.

  “It is pretty clear renewables will be the most competitive technologies from a price perspective even without the credits,” he said.

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers.