Commercial, Distributed Generation, Sourcing Renewables  -  February 19, 2016

First-time corporate renewable energy buyers breathing down Google’s neck

Google still dominates the corporate renewable energy buyers' market, but new entrants made major headway in 2015, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute's Business Renewables Center.

According to the BRC, about 2.29 GW of 2015's year-end tally — or slightly more than two-thirds the total — was purchased by corporations new to utility-scale renewable energy. Total deals announced in 2015 amounted to 3.44 GW of mostly wind and solar energy.

The largest new entrants last year included Amazon, Equinix, Owens Corning and Dow Chemical, all of which signed power purchase agreements totaling at least 200 MW. The BRC pointed out that a majority of those companies are affiliated with the center. New-entrant firms represented 85% of deals and 86% of contracted capacity, according to the BRC. 

And 2016 has already gotten off to an encouraging start, indicating the trend toward corporate renewable energy purchases, which has been dramatically increasing in recent years, could continue in 2017. To boot, the recent extension of the federal tax credits supporting wind and solar are expected to drive further activity. 

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