Real Estate Solar Leaderboards
2025 Year-in-Review
Black Bear's Real Estate Solar Leaderboards track the real estate industry's leading owners and asset managers deploying onsite solar across their portfolios.
Solar Deployment in the Last 10 Years
*Name Withheld
Each year's solar total is primarily driven by a core group of large, repeat deployers, with a long tail of Real Estate Owners contributing incrementally — a consistent pattern across all 10 years of data. Notably, 2025 marks the highest single-year total on record at 169 MWdc. It is important to recognize that energized capacity is a lagging indicator — projects here were likely contracted 2–3 years earlier, suggesting the pipeline being built today will define the leaderboards to follow.
Top 20 U.S. Real Estate Owners & Managers
*Name Withheld
This chart reflects total solar capacity installed by each REIT, including projects that have since been sold or decommissioned. Hover over each bar in the graph to view more information about these sold and decommissioned sites. Subsequent charts show active capacity only.
Top 20 U.S. Real Estate Owners & Managers
Solar Leaderboards by Project Totals (MWdc)
Click on a company to filter projects on the map.*Name Withheld
Project Locations and Scale
Circle size represents installed capacity.
Top 5 REITs vs. All Other REITs
Share of total installed capacity (MWdc).
A limited number of large real estate owners—led by Prologis—account for a disproportionate share of total capacity. However, rankings shift when measured by the total number of projects, highlighting differences in portfolio scale and deployment strategies. This report shows 1.064 GWdc of total installed and energized solar capacity from 2,125 projects across the U.S.
Top 20 Real Estate Owners & Managers by Deal Structure
Behind-the-meter (BTM) vs. front-of-meter (FTM) installed capacity.
*Name Withheld
Deal Structure Category
- Behind the Meter (BTM):
- Net energy metering and other BTM projects, e.g. Net Billing.
- Front of Meter (FTM):
- Community Solar, Feed-in Tariff (FiT), Virtual Net Metering (VNEM), and other hosted projects.
657 MWdc
Behind-the-Meter · 62% of total
397 MWdc
Front-of-Meter · 37% of total
MWdc Solar by Project Deal Structure
Solar deployment among leading real estate owners is primarily driven by behind-the-meter projects, while front-of-meter systems contribute substantially due to their larger scale. Most top owners utilize a mix of both project types, underscoring the value of diversified deal structures.
BTM projects account for 62% of total installed capacity in the dataset, with an average size of 0.370 MWdc. In contrast, FTM projects represent 37% of capacity but average 1.16 MWdc per installation, emphasizing their disproportionate impact on overall capacity growth.
Top 20 Real Estate Owners & Managers by Contract Type
How each portfolio finances and owns its solar assets.
*Name Withheld
MWdc Solar by Project Contract Type
Click a slice or a row below to filter the leaderboard.
Landlord or Tenant Owned: the real estate owner or its tenant funds and owns the system outright, typically through an engineering, procurement & construction (EPC) contract.
Third Party Owned: a developer or investor owns the system on the owner’s roof or land, monetizing it through a roof lease, a power purchase agreement (PPA), or both.
Contract structure is where a portfolio’s solar strategy shows up most clearly: it determines who puts up the capital, who carries the operating risk, and who keeps the tax benefits. Landlord or Tenant Owned — EPC is the single largest structure in the dataset at 48.2% of installed capacity, but third-party-owned arrangements — lease, PPA, or a combination of the two — together account for the majority of megawatts on this leaderboard.
Very few owners are all-in on one approach. Most of the top 20 run a mix, using owned systems where they have the capital and the tax appetite, and third-party financing where they want the energy savings without the balance-sheet commitment. Click any contract type to see which owners are driving it.
Top Real Estate Owners & Managers by Asset Type
The leading owners within each property type, ranked by installed capacity.
Industrial
743.14 MWdc · 582 projects
Self Storage
113.39 MWdc · 1,131 projects
Retail
112.82 MWdc · 179 projects
Multifamily
40.70 MWdc · 161 projects
Office
18.05 MWdc · 46 projects
Data Center
8.19 MWdc · 4 projects
Managers
186.79 MWdc · 143 projects
Share of Total Capacity
- Industrial69.9%
- Self Storage10.7%
- Retail10.6%
- Multifamily3.8%
- Office1.7%
- Data Center0.8%
- Hotel0.4%
- Other2.2%
*Name Withheld
Solar adoption is far from evenly spread across property types. Industrial alone accounts for 69.9% of installed capacity — large, flat, structurally simple roofs on buildings with long lease terms make it the natural first target for a portfolio-wide program.
Capacity and project count tell different stories: self storage contributes far more individual projects than megawatts, since each site is small, while a single industrial rooftop can outweigh dozens of them. Managers are shown separately because they operate across asset types on behalf of the owners of those buildings, rather than holding a portfolio of one property type themselves.
Top Real Estate Owners & Managers by Asset Type
Click the pie chart, or a description, to filter the leaderboard.
Facility Type: All
*Name Withheld
Project Installed Volume (MWdc) by State
Share of Installed Capacity
- California32.5%
- New Jersey30.5%
- Maryland11.8%
- Massachusetts3.6%
- New York3.2%
- Illinois2.5%
- Texas2.5%
- Pennsylvania2.2%
- Florida2.0%
- Hawaii1.3%
- Other states (23)7.9%
Top 3 States
1. California leads the nation in total solar deployment, driven by high electricity rates, NEM policies, and LADWP's Feed-in Tariff program. Continued delays in statewide community solar programs, as well as the transition to NEM 3.0, have slowed recent growth.
New in 2025: 57.15 MWdc
2. New Jersey remains a top market thanks to its strong SREC program and successful net metered and community solar programs, supporting steady deployment across asset types. They continue to expand capacity in community solar programs.
New in 2025: 34.49 MWdc
3. Maryland’s rapid growth is fueled by its community solar program, which continues to expand with statewide participation. The state is quickly closing the gap with NJ and CA in total MW installed.
New in 2025: 30.01 MWdc
Behind- vs Front-of-Meter in the Leading Markets
Stacked bars rather than a matrix, so each market’s total and its mix read at once.
Top 10 Real Estate Owners & Managers in the Last 3 Years
*Name Withheld
Hover the dots to see the owner, size, asset type and year each project came online.
Capacity by Year Energized
- 202389.5
- 2024104.3
- 2025169.2
- Other700.7
Over the last three years, real estate owners energized 363 MWdc of solar — 169 MWdc of it in 2025 alone. The ten owners shown here account for 316 MWdc of that. Taken together, the last three years now represent 34% of every megawatt in the dataset, a measure of how quickly deployment is scaling across the U.S. On current trends we expect that pace to continue.
Methodology
Sources
- Projects facilitated by Black Bear Energy, its clients, and channel partners
- Project data voluntarily submitted by real estate owners and managers
- Publicly announced projects or data available through public domains
- Third-party sources, including the SEIA Solar Means Business Report
Project Status & Geography
- Projects energized on or before December 31 of the reporting year
- Projects located within the United States
- The database includes decommissioned and sold properties, filtered out of the final ranking
Project Details
- Solar projects hosted on a real estate asset's roof, parking lot or structure, or land
- Projects where electricity is used onsite (by tenant or landlord) or offsite (e.g. community solar)
Portfolio Attribution Logic
- The Leaderboards focus on solar capacity installed on a real estate company's existing portfolio
- An additional layer tracks projects a real estate company energized but has since sold or decommissioned
Important Data Limitations & Disclosures
- This represents the most complete dataset available at the time of publication
- Not all real estate owners publicly disclose onsite solar installations
- Some projects may remain unreported or inaccessible through public sources
- Data availability and disclosure practices vary by company and time period
- Rankings should be interpreted as a directional benchmark of market leadership, not a comprehensive census of all deployed solar
Dataset Coverage
- Black Bear Energy expects dataset coverage and accuracy to improve over time as additional companies voluntarily submit data and public disclosure increases
Thank you for your participation in the Real Estate Solar Leaderboard Report!
We will be collecting data again for the release of the next report. Please reach out to info@blackbearenergy.com to be included in this report or to answer any questions you might have.