Corporate PPA Contracts Added 148 GW of RE From 2015 to 2022: WBSCD

As per a recent report shared by World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBSCD), 23% of the firms that aimed for 100% renewable energy have achieved their goal of 100% renewable energy. Furthermore, by 2021, companies committing to procure 100% renewable power through RE100 were procuring 49% from renewable sources, equating to 184 TWh of renewable electricity.

In another finding, corporate renewable PPAs in specific, firms have contracted more than 148 GW of renewable power globally, with annual capacity records broken each year. Of this capacity, the APAC region has claimed the maximum share with 4.6 GW. The cumulative volume (AMER, EMA, APAC)  of corporate renewable PPAs has witnessed colossal growth from 2015 to 2022, rising upwards from 4.7 GW in 2015 to 36.7 GW in 2022.

As per BloombergNEF, in 2021, “businesses signed corporate renewable PPAs equivalent to more than 10% of all
the renewable electricity capacity added globally that year.” In another observation, corporate buying has seen a huge diversification, including their chosen routes to market in recent years, which shows that it is becoming a business norm. Concerning geographic diversification, “companies in 52 countries had signed corporate renewable PPAs globally by the end of 2022, compared to 15 countries in 2015.” With reference to sector diversification, “companies from 11 industry
sectors had signed over 1 GW of PPA capacity by the end of 2022, compared to 4 sectors in 2015.”

As per the report, there are four main corporate renewable procurement methods, which entail direct investment, power purchase agreements (PPAs), green tariffs and utility products and unbundled energy attribute certificates (EACs).

In India, the corporate PPA market has also started picking pace, with developers predicting as high as 10 GW annually from the market in the near future. Large developers hitherto focused on the utility segment have made a pivot to the Corporate PPA market, offering solutions ranging from plain vanilla renewable energy to ETC power to their clients.