Almost 100 organisations led by major corporates today signalled their willingness to do more on climate action calling on European governments to make it easier to invest and directly source renewable energy. The group signed this declaration at the RE-Source 2018 event in Amsterdam.
Corporate renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) worth 6GW have already been signed in Europe, representing billions of Euros of investment and thousands of jobs. Nearly 2GW of this has been contracted in 2018 alone. Commercial and industrial on-site corporate sourcing accounted for 1.7GW in 2017 and is expected to grow considerably in the next five years.
To unlock the full potential for investing directly in onsite and offsite renewable energy and through PPAs, the declaration calls on policymakers to remove all regulatory and administrative barriers to corporate sourcing of renewable energy, as required by the recently enacted Renewable Energy Directive.
Corporates also ask for greater clarity and certainty on the long-term ownership of Guarantees of Origin (GOs), which are crucial for corporates to know they are buying renewable electricity. Corporates also call for the enabling of a wide variety of procurement models and market products, from on and offsite solutions to multi-corporate renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) to minimise risks and maximise participation. Corporates must also be allowed to sign cross-border renewable energy transactions to maximise opportunities to deploy the most cost-effective renewable energy solutions.
More broadly, over 150 companies have committed to source 100% of their electricity from renewable energy through RE100. RE-Source, Europe’s platform for corporate renewable energy sourcing, now aims to increase the number of corporates buying renewable power from 100 to 100,000.
