Our government is firmly controlled by fossil fuel interests that have turned federal climate action into a pipe dream. Thankfully, a scrappy band of multi-billion dollar corporations are keeping the renewable energy revolution alive.
Plucky upstarts like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and AT&T are part of a group fo nearly 60 companies making major investments in renewable energy. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Business Renewables Center, they’ve already set an annual record for renewable energy procurements this year with four months still to go in 2018.
Companies have made deals to fund 3.86 gigawatts of renewable power in the U.S., enough energy to power nearly 2 million homes. The previous record was set in 2015 when large corporations procured 3.12 gigawatts of renewable energy.
The analysis is based on public records like power purchase agreements according to Alex Klonick, an associate at the Business Renewable Center. That means most of the projects aren’t completed yet, but they’ve been signed off on and are in the works.
“That being said, there is a wide mix of situations,” he told Earther. “Some deals add capacity to an already built or in construction project, others repower and add capacity to older offline projects. The scalable nature of renewables allows the flexibility in bringing new renewables onto the grid.”
Given the tech nature of many of the companies on the list, the power will go toward the copious needs of keeping data centers cool. Thus it’s perhaps no surprise Facebook is the clear leader in 2018. The social network signed off on a gigawatt of renewable energy, the first company to make that type of investment in a year. AT&T was the second biggest player, jumping on the renewables bandwagon for the first time to announce contracts for 820 megawatts of clean energy.
As with all things corporate, this isn’t some kumbaya-around-the-campfire thing. It’s about money and keeping employees and customers happy.
On the money front, renewables have never cost less. Earlier this summer, a Nevada solar farm set a record for the cheapest solar project in the U.S. Red states are plowing ahead with onshore wind energy as prices drop, and offshore wind may finally be having a moment, too. The prices are only expected to keep dropping, making renewables ever more attractive.
Companies are also trying to retain employees and keeping customers happy. Klonick said these groups are placing ever more pressure on companies to not be evil (at least when it comes to energy, the jury’s out on other fronts).
The record-setting renewable purchases are objectively good news. But here’s where I must temper it a bit. Companies still have a long road ahead to clean up their energy act.
Apple, for example, announced it runs on 100 percent renewable energy in April. But that announcement belies that their supply chain continues to be a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions. Ditto for a company like Amazon. And while tech and communications currently use three to five percent of the world’s electricity, that could rise to 20 percent by 2025 as more of the world ignores the sound advice to just log off.