Corporate Clean Energy Surge
Corporate clean energy procurement has topped 130 GW globally, with U.S. corporate purchases hitting a record in 2025 — up 12% year-on-year and driven largely by solar PV deals. At the same time China’s wind and solar buildout is creating huge decommissioning waste, and major utilities are investing in large-scale recycling systems for panels and turbine blades to manage millions of tonnes. (prnewswire.com) (electrek.co)
CEBA’s Deal Tracker shows corporate buyers contracted roughly 27.3 GW of new generation in 2025 and that corporate-backed generation made up at least 4% of total U.S. generation through 2025. ((cebuyers.org)) CEBA reports the number of corporate market participants fell about 40% versus 2024 and new entrants were the fewest since 2016, signalling consolidation among larger, well‑resourced buyers. ((cebuyers.org)) Market concentration is visible: S&P Global found Amazon, Meta and Microsoft accounted for more than 76% of corporate offtake activity in a recent multi‑month period. ((spglobal.com)) Corporate procurement in 2025 shifted toward clean firm technologies—CEBA says nuclear became the second‑largest technology procured, the first corporate natural‑gas‑with‑CCS deal was announced, and the largest corporate PPA for fusion (200 MW) closed that year. ((cebuyers.org)) Over 70% of 2025 corporate deal announcements included solar PV, and CEBA notes roughly 85% of announced deals were in organized power markets, with ERCOT nearly doubling its total corporate volume year‑over‑year. ((pv-tech.org)) China faces a mounting decommissioning burden: one industry estimate projects 20 million tonnes of end‑of‑life PV modules by 2050 and about 3 million tonnes of retired wind blades by 2035. ((businesspost.ng)) Researchers and industry observers warn wind‑blade waste could reach into the tens of millions of tonnes by 2050, while Chinese utilities and CHN Energy units are building centralized recycling lines and pilot plants to process thousands of tonnes annually. ((rechargenews.com)) China’s industry groups and regulators are drafting reuse‑first recycling standards and aiming for a “basically mature” full‑process recycling system by 2030, with one recycling association estimating some 35 million tonnes of retired wind and solar materials will require processing by 2030. ((world-energy.org))
