Big Business's New Energy Buys Set Records

Corporate Clean Energy Buying Leapt 44% in 2019, Sets New Record

January 28, 2020 (BloombergNEF)

Corporations bought a record amount of clean energy through power purchase agreements, or PPAs, in 2019, up more than 40% from the previous year’s record. The majority of this purchasing occurred in the United States, but also underpinning the strong uptrend is a surge in corporate sustainability commitments around the world…[According to the BloombergNEF (BNEF) 1H 2020 Corporate Energy Market Outlook, 19.5GW] of clean energy contracts were signed by more than 100 corporations in 23 different countries in 2019. This was up from 13.6GW in 2018, and more than triple the activity seen in 2017…[T]he 2019 total was equivalent to more than 10% of all the renewable energy capacity added globally last year – and the projects involved are likely to cost between $20 billion and $30 billion to develop and build…Technology companies once again dominated clean energy procurement. Google signed contracts to purchase over 2.7GW of clean energy globally in 2019, more than any other corporation…

click to enlarge

Facebook (1.1GW), Amazon (0.9GW) and Microsoft (0.8GW) were the next largest buyers globally in 2019…[A] growing number of oil and gas companies are signing clean energy deals…PPAs in the Americas region totalled an unprecedented 15.7GW last year…It was also a record year for corporate PPAs in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Latin America…Brazil and Chile have emerged as top markets…Nearly 400 companies around the world committed to setting a science-based target in 2019, more than doubling the total number of firms with these goals…The RE100 totalled 221 members through 2019, collectively consuming 233TWh of electricity in 2018…[T]hese 221 RE100 companies will need to purchase an additional 210TWh of clean electricity in 2030 to meet their targets…[That] would catalyze an estimated 105GW of new solar and wind build globally. Funding these new additions would be expected to require an additional $98 billion of investment…” click here for more

click to enlarge

Tweet