Corporations – including oil & gas supermajors – bought a record of almost 20GW of renewable energy through power purchase agreements (PPAs) last year, a leap of 44% on 2018, as one of the key market-driving trends in the global energy transition, according to latest figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
Technology sector giants continued to dominate the market for clean energy procurement, led by Google, which signed PPAs for over 2.7GW globally last year, including a September spree where it bought almost 2GW of renewable power in six countries – the largest single announcement ever by a corporation.
Facebook (1.1GW), Amazon (0.9GW) and Microsoft (0.8GW) rounded out the top for largest renewable-energy PPA buyers in 2019.
A growing number of oil & gas companies have also started to cross-over to clean energy purchase – if not production, with Occidental Petroleum, Chevron and Energy Transfer Partners all signed solar contracts in 2019, following in the steps of ExxonMobil, which inked two PPAs totaling 575MW at the end of 2018.
2019 was also a record-setting year for corporate PPAs in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Latin America, where companies bought 2.6GW and 2GW of clean energy, respectively. However it dipped in Asia Pacific (APAC) region.
The analyst also highlight that 63 companies set out an ‘RE100’ plan in 2019, pledging to offset 100% of their electricity demand with clean energy, as set out by The Climate Group’s RE100 initiative.
The RE100 now has 221 members, collectively consuming 233TWh of electricity in 2018, based on their latest filings.
Reference- Bloomberg New Energy Finance Report, Recharge News, Economic Times