The corporate call for renewable energy just got louder

Customers are lining up to buy wind energy because it’s low-cost and clean, and major corporations like Microsoft and Facebook are at the front of the line. A new coalition, the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA), has formed to clear the way for more renewable energy.

Their goal? Facilitate and deploy 60 gigawatts (GW) of new corporate renewable energy in the U.S. by 2025. That’s a big deal. Consider that the entire U.S. wind fleet today is around 75 GW, enough to power 20 million average homes.

The rising trend of corporate buyers of wind energy will be highlighted during a panel discussion at this year’s WINDPOWER Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans, May 24-26. During the panel Wind Power for CFOs: The Other Side of a C&I Deal, attendees can hear from Fortune 500 companies who have purchased wind energy, and the developers who are supplying it, to learn more about how and why corporate wind deals are made. Registration and press accreditation is now open.

Data centers, retail stores and factories, among others, are increasingly seeking clean energy. Companies can make green and be green at the same time by signing low-cost, fixed-price contracts for wind energy.

The growth in demand from corporate and other emerging buyers of wind energy broke records in 2015. For the first time ever, corporations signed for more than half of the wind capacity contracted through long-term deals called power purchase agreements (PPA).

Wind power is seeing an exponential growth in demand from corporate and other emerging buyers. Credit: AWEA 2015 U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report

REBA aims to find solutions among customers, renewable energy suppliers, utilities, and policy makers that can open additional market opportunities for renewable energy. There’s a lot of room to grow – in 2015, corporate and other emerging buyers of wind energy announced PPAs in one quarter of the 40 states that currently host large-scale wind farms.