Looking Ahead: Lessons in Corporate Renewable Energy

I found time over the holidays to reflect a bit, both personally and professionally. In doing so, I had a few takeaways on the state of corporate renewable energy: 

2024 was an active year. I spent the year keeping up with changes in the renewable energy landscape, and then helping Ren Energy’s customers and potential customers understand how to navigate those changes. I spoke with all kinds of folks at conferences—some people at the bleeding edge of corporate renewables, some trying to catch up, others are in a consulting role like myself—but everyone is feeling challenged by the state of the industry. 

From my viewpoint, the main hurdles everyone is facing today are simply put, but often difficult to navigate:

1. This is as much a human challenge as it is a technical one
2. Pioneers are often left scarred
3. Action at-scale requires frameworks and flexibility
4. AI and tariff threats are shifting the playing field

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1) Corporate renewable energy implementation is just as much a human challenge as it is a technical one

There is endless talk about “goals”, “alignment”, “summits”, and “stakeholder engagement”, but what’s easily lost in this jargon is that there are humans behind every step in the process. Each person wants to go home at the end of the day knowing that they are safe in their job, and they can continue to put food on the table for themselves and their families. To do that, most people focus on hitting whatever KPIs have been set for them. If any new proposal is difficult to align with a KPI, it can be hard to move that proposal forward. 

This holds true both within corporations and between businesses and their suppliers. Within a corporation, you’ll often see conflict between sustainability teams and sourcing teams. If the KPI of a sourcing manager is to maintain supplier relationships and protect margins, and the KPI of the sustainability team is to launch a new supplier initiative focused on renewable energy, there could be a conflict. The sustainability team wants more of the suppliers’ time, the sourcing team fears the initiative will drive up costs, so the sourcing team refuses to help the sustainability team on their initiative. Corporations can go a long way towards advancing their sustainability initiatives by aligning their internal teams to the same goals. 

Between businesses and their suppliers, you see suppliers understandably torn between sticking to their existing business plan and adopting new renewable energy practices. At the end of the day they just want to know they’re going to continue receiving business from the corporations they sell to. They need to know that by participating in these sustainability initiatives, it will benefit their business in the long run. 

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2) Pioneers are often left scarred

‍As someone who likes to spend my free time in the mountains, I know that the first person down a new trail is likely to endure some scrapes and risk a twisted ankle. The same is true in corporate renewables. I’ve had the fortune to work with some of the trailblazers in this space and they all have their horror stories. Every company and individual who has done something meaningful in this space has struggled, and most have even had moments where they felt like giving up. We spoke with several folks who completed one of the first aggregated CPPAs in Europe and each one reflected on the three year endeavor—saying it was one of the hardest things they’ve ever done in their life. 

I recently heard a quote from Dr. Becky Kennedy along the lines of “just because something is hard doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong, it could just be a hard thing to do.” I think that holds true with some of these groundbreaking initiatives. The companies that are willing to persevere and endure a few missteps are the ones that are going to generate the precedent necessary to move the whole industry forward. It’s these kinds of companies I get to work with every day and I’m honored to help them along their journey. 

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3) Action at-scale requires frameworks and flexibility

Over the last few years I’ve seen lots of hand-wringing over the lack of a silver bullet solution. We’ve seen a number of “one-size-fits-all” proposals gain huge interest only to fizzle out. I confess that I too have wished for a simple solution, but it’s not possible, not yet. There are just too many variables. 

That said, Ren Energy was founded on the idea of taking corporations renewable at-scale. We’ve been working for years to build a combination of software and services that allow our customers to untangle the complexity of supply chain renewable energy. But once that knot is untangled, how do you take meaningful action in so many directions all at the same time? 2030 goals are now less than 5 years away 😳. 

At the end of the day, you have to fit solutions into repeatable frameworks—it’s the only way to scale. However, due to the humanity of this work and the nuances of different markets, there has to be some level of flexibility. This could look like a standardized process for identifying key suppliers in markets with favorable renewable energy policy, followed by individualized business cases once you engage those suppliers. It might look like engaging all factories according to a set timeline, but spending extra resources to make sure the anchor to the project is bought-in. It can feel messy at times, but it’s actionable, and it allows meaningful projects to move forward today instead of waiting for a miracle solution that may never arrive. 

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4) AI and tariff threats are shifting the playing field

Hate it or love it, nuclear is back in the picture, and that’s only one way energy demand from AI is shifting the industry. The sheer amount of energy demand from these AI-driven data centers is hard to wrap your mind around. Microsoft had been making progress towards their decarbonization goals yet their emissions shot up 30% in one year. The U.S. alone is predicting a 10% increase in energy demand country-wide due to AI. This has impacts on everything and in any country that’s open to new data centers. Transmission infrastructure and planning has to change, policy is already shifting, and suddenly small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) can’t reach commercialization fast enough. Brands are shifting from renewable energy (RE) goals, to carbon free energy (CFE) goals. And those changes are just the tip of the quickly-melting iceberg. 

As with the U.S. tariff threats, the full impacts of the AI boom are still yet to be understood, but it doesn’t mean early indicators aren’t visible. With the tariffs, we’re starting to see a shift away from Chinese manufacturing. It’s unclear whether that will be temporary or permanent. And with the AI boom, firm power and co-location has become more important than ever to the large tech companies. As Ren Energy has focused on aggregating energy demand before, there’s now an increased focus on aggregated and diversified energy supply in order to meet these 24/7 requirements. 

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Conclusion

‍With all this in mind, I’m looking forward to 2025. The year is bound to hold a number of challenges, but as I am every year, I’m excited to continue working each day on a problem that matters to me personally. By spending time overcoming these challenges, I hope that I can help move us all a little closer to a better future—one with cleaner air and icebergs that don’t melt so quickly.