Leading the Way in Corporate Renewable Energy Solutions
3 min readIn today’s energy landscape, an increasing number of businesses are looking for ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, support their sustainability strategies and mitigate their energy pricing risk. Renewable energy procurement has been a key solution for many businesses striving to achieve these goals. According to the Clean Energy Buyers Association, renewable energy purchases by commercial and industrial customers surged to nearly 17 GW in 2022, a 172% increase since 2018.
Constellation has been at the forefront of this transition, simplifying and scaling access to offsite renewables through Constellation’s Offsite Renewables (CORe) program. CORe enables customers to support the development of new wind or solar projects that feed power into the grid and match their usage through a simple retail renewable energy contract. Constellation handles the most complicated aspects of the process, including sourcing viable projects, conducting analytics, negotiating PPAs and structuring the transactions – making the process easier for customers.
In this first blog in our corporate renewable energy series, we discuss our innovative solutions and their impact on supporting local communities and matching usage to carbon-free sources.
Constellation’s Next Wave of Renewable Energy Products
After establishing the CORe program, Constellation recognized additional challenges customers faced in procuring renewable energy. It committed to establishing innovative products to help even more customers access clean power, support local communities and match their usage to carbon-free sources.
Expanding access to offsite renewable energy
Constellation recognized the challenges small- and medium- sized businesses faced while looking to purchase renewable energy, including high credit standards, time and resource constraints, and access to renewable projects. Constellation is developing new offerings to allow more commercial businesses to commit to their sustainability journeys and overcome these barriers by:
- Purchasing portions of CORe projects in smaller increments.
- Significantly reducing the minimum energy commitment.
Impact PPAs for local communities
To deliver broader community benefits in addition to clean power, Constellation developed an impact PPA model, which expands the benefits of the large offsite renewable energy projects they support to local communities. Under the impact PPA model, Constellation and the project developer:
- Dedicate a portion of revenues to fund initiatives such as workforce training, education and job placement assistance in underserved communities.
- Tailor these programs based on the project location, company location and needs of the residents.
- Expand renewable energy careers to underrepresented groups, provide the training needed while strengthening local inclusion and enabling renewable energy expansion.
This model was designed for broad application across various industries and projects, ensuring that community benefits and support are consistently delivered in every market. For a real-world example of how impact PPAs can benefit local communities, read about our collaboration with the City of Chicago, which highlights the city’s renewable energy commitment and workforce development.
Hourly carbon-free energy matching for real-time performance
Constellation developed an hourly matching product, leveraging Microsoft technology, to pair customer usage with carbon-free and renewable sources on an hour-by-hour basis. The hourly carbon-free energy matching product combines Constellation’s expertise in generation and supply management with advanced data analytics to deliver a comprehensive solution that empowers businesses to:
- Gain visibility into hourly energy supply and emissions on the local grid.
- Receive recommendations on supply strategies and investments to reduce carbon impact.
- Track progress towards achieving hourly carbon-free energy matching.
Powered by advanced and reliable data tracking and analytics that match a customer’s real-time energy usage to the grid’s generation mix, businesses can easily understand their performance and emissions rates and identify the most impactful steps for improvement.
Take Action Today
Ready to revolutionize your renewable energy strategy while effectively managing risks and costs? Reach out to Constellation to get started on the path to a more sustainable future. Plus, stay tuned for our upcoming deep dives into the solutions highlighted in this blog as we progress through our corporate renewable energy series.
Learn more about how you can leverage Constellation’s expertise to shape your energy strategy.
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