Corporate buyers key drivers for wind, solar energy

Bloomberg

Contracts to sell electricity directly to corporate users are among the key demand drivers for wind and solar power, while the influence of state mandates wanes, according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service.
Multiple factors are spurring corporate power deals, especially from companies that have set their own sustainability goals. And the shift comes as costs continue to fall. Power purchase agreements with wind farms are now available for as low as $15 per megawatt-hour, according
to Moody’s, and $35 a megawatt-hour for solar.
“The economics are making it easier for new entrants to join,” Lesley Ritter, an analyst at Moody’s, said in an interview. Community choice aggregators are another new entrant, formed by counties or cities to encourage more clean power.
Corporations agreed to buy nearly 3.7 gigawatts of power generated
by clean-energy projects in 2015, and another 2.5 gigawatts last year,
almost all from wind and solar, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Through Wednesday, corporations had bought 340 megaw-
atts this year.
Technology companies led by Alphabet Inc.’s Google are among the biggest buyers of clean power. Companies are signing power purchase agreements, in part, for long-term visibility into their electrical costs. Some, like Google, are also keen to add more green electricity to grids. There have been at least 32 corporate buyers to date, Moody’s found.