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| | | | |  | | By Jordan Wolman | | | | | 
| 2021 was a banner year for U.S. companies’ purchases of clean energy. More than 100 projects pursued by the nation’s biggest corporate customers resulted in a record 11.06 gigawatts of contracted capacity last year, according to the Clean Energy Buyers Association’s annual tracking of such deals. Amazon.com topped the list for the second straight year, with 2.85 GW of announced clean energy purchases, CEBA said. Meta, Verizon, Google and Microsoft were the next-biggest buyers. Clean energy deals completed by U.S. companies have risen almost every year since CEBA started tracking them in 2014. The amount Amazon purchased in 2021 is more than double the 1.2 GW recorded for all U.S. energy customers in that first year. The rankings demonstrate the private sector's role in boosting clean energy. The 47 GW of corporate purchases that CEBA has counted since 2008 represent about 20 percent of all wind and solar generation in the U.S., the group said.
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| | | | | BECOME A GLOBAL INSIDER: The world is more connected than ever. It has never been more essential to identify, unpack and analyze important news, trends and decisions shaping our future — and we’ve got you covered! Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Global Insider author Ryan Heath navigates the global news maze and connects you to power players and events changing our world. Don’t miss out on this influential global community. Subscribe now. | | | | | But here’s the catch: Despite the dramatic growth in procurements, they still represent but a drop in the bucket of overall energy demand. Amazon’s carbon emissions, for example, have risen by more than one-third since 2018 even as it leads the way in clean energy purchases and aims to move to 100 percent renewable energy by 2025. But more broadly, we’re just a long way off from adopting renewable energy sources as the dominant form of power generation. In 2020, fossil fuels accounted for 79 percent of all U.S. energy consumption, according to the Energy Information Administration. Still, the 21 percent of consumption that came from renewables and nuclear represented the biggest share of nonfossil fuel energy in more than a century, the EIA said. Renewables are projected to continue to rise, both over the next few years and longer term as new projects come online. The EIA estimates renewables will account for 42 percent of total U.S. energy consumption by 2050. Large corporations will have an outsize role to play in that transition, according to the World Resources Institute. That may be reason enough for energy observers to pay attention to measures like CEBA’s tracking of clean energy deals.
| | | — The United States Postal Service opted to go with gasoline-powered vehicles for its new fleet. That’s not what the Biden administration was hoping for, Bloomberg reports. — A new report out of Georgetown University highlights near-term policy recommendations for the United States to secure a domestic critical minerals supply chain. Read it in full here. — Look out: The International Energy Agency said Wednesday that methane emissions are 70 percent higher than governments worldwide are claiming. The AP has you covered.
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