Corporate Clean Energy Buying Heaved to New Record in 2018: BNEF

BNEF has discovered in its 1H 2019 Corporate Energy Market Outlook, that approximately 13.4 GW of clean energy contracts were signed by 121 corporations in 21 diverse countries in 2018. This was up from 6.1GW in 2017 and positions companies next to utilities as the major buyers of clean energy worldwide.

Jonas Rooze, Head of Corporate Sustainability, BNEF, said, “Corporations have signed contracts to purchase over 32GW of clean power since 2008, an amount comparable to the generation capacity of the Netherlands, with 86% of this activity coming since 2015 and more than 40% in 2018 alone.”

More than 60 percent of the global movement in 2018 transpired in the U.S., where companies signed PPAs to procure 8.5GW of clean energy, practically triple the amount signed in 2017. Facebook headed a contingent of experienced U.S. corporate energy buyers, purchasing over 2.6GW of renewables globally in 2018, mostly with utilities in regulated U.S. markets through programs known as green tariffs. This was three times that of the subsequently biggest corporate energy purchaser, AT&T.

Kyle Harrison, the pilot author of the report, said, “The aggregation model has heralded in a new generation of corporate clean energy buyers. These companies no longer need to tackle the complexities of clean energy procurement alone. They can share risks associated with credit and energy market volatility with their peers.”

In the Asia-Pacific region, still a budding market for corporate procurement, companies signed a record 2GW of clean energy PPAs, more than the preceding two years combined. Nearly all of this activity occurred in India and Australia, with approximately 1.3GW and 0.7GW of clean energy purchased, respectively. Both markets permit companies to buy clean energy at a large scale through offsite PPAs, making them rarities for the region.