It’s time to change who can access clean energy deals

• 2 days ago (2026-06-29)
• Junior Isles

Renewables 829

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Robert Groves , CEO, SmartestEnergy

Corporate power purchase agreements (CPPA) are a game changer in the energy transition. They can help fund the development of new wind and solar projects and provide businesses with a price they can fix for years, enabling energy managers to better manage risk. They can also help balance supply and demand.

Too good to be true? Sometimes, yes, as the catch is in which type of business gets to sign a CPPA. It tends to be the same sort of company every time. Large, cash-rich, and demand steady enough to underwrite a contract running well over a decade. So, the question worth asking is a simple one: how do you make a deal like this work for the mid-market?

Why the door to CPPAs has stayed shut for some

The barriers to signing a CPPA are to do with size rather than demand.

A developer building a wind farm wants a buyer big enough to take a significant chunk of its output for ten or 15 years, and a single mid-sized firm just doesn’t have the volume to meet this criterion. Then there's the fact that renewable generation rarely turns up exactly when you need it, so there has to be an intermediary to manage supply/demand balancing and forecasting.

The organisation in charge of supply/demand also has to be ready to carry the risk if the two don't line up. A large corporate running one big site can absorb all of this fairly easily, but a business with a hundred smaller sites dotted around the country usually can't.

So, you end up in an awkward situation where organisations who are keen to shift to clean and renewable energy often have their hands tied.

Pooling demand to match a big buyer

There is, however, a way around this. OurCoop has recently signed a ten-year CPPA, pulling five independent co-operative societies into a single contract. Between them they will be supplied with 56 GWh of renewable electricity a year across more than 400 sites.

Putting the demand of several mid-sized organisations together means they can match the high volumes of a single large corporate. None of the five societies could have managed a CPPA on their own, but coming together to purchase energy collectively means they’ve unlocked benefits for their members, customers and the communities they serve.

Handling the complexity behind the scenes

But none of this works without the right support. One contract covering 400 sites and five different organisations means a fair amount of forecasting and risk to be managed every day.

That job lands on the supplier in the middle, lining up demand with the renewable supply being received. For that organisation it means working out how much power each site is likely to draw, keeping supply and demand in step as generation rises and falls, and shouldering the risk the buyers shouldn’t have to handle themselves.

Building flexibility in from the start is crucial. In this example, the five societies are nothing like each other. They vary in size, number of sites and ways of operating. The intermediary must be able to ensure they can deliver a tailored structure that supports different operational footprints, balancing the needs of different sized portfolios. It all comes down to ensuring rigidity is never part of the process. A structure that only holds together when every buyer looks identical isn't going to push us forward in the right way.

Enabling similar success across the industry

The same barriers that kept these co-ops out of the CPPA market also block huge parts of the economy, such as housing associations, NHS trusts and retailers. But coming together as a collective can change that. Organisations too small or too widely spread to sign a CPPA alone can work with others to reach the scale that makes a deal possible and share in the steadier prices and clean power benefits that come with it.

We can't meet the country's clean energy goals if we rely solely on good intentions from big businesses. If you run a number of sites and you've long assumed a deal like this isn't for you, it's worth another look. The model is up and running, and the organisations that move while it is still early are the ones that will lock in clean power and steadier prices, protecting themselves from market volatility caused by geopolitical uncertainty and unforeseen weather price shocks.