Clarify Renewable Energy Goals

Clarifying renewable energy goals typically involves two steps:

• Understand your company’s current and expected energy consumption

• Understand or establish your company’s renewable energy goals

These steps may or may not be sequential; often, companies establish renewable energy goals and strategies based in part on energy consumption, but other companies do not follow this pattern.

Understand your company’s current and expected energy consumption.

Many GHG or renewable energy targets are framed as percent reductions compared to a baseline year. As such, it is necessary to understand current levels and, to the extent those levels would be expected to change significantly under business as usual over the coming years, forecasted future levels. This involves gathering data on your company’s current electricity use. Specifically, you may need to work with your local energy procurement teams or facilities managers to determine:

• electricity use by location;

• the total amount of electricity consumption; and

• the timing of that electricity consumption (e.g., does it follow daily or seasonal patterns? How volatile is it?).

You might also consider your company’s sustainability goals beyond electricity specifically (e.g., broader energy or carbon goals) and whether sourcing excess renewable electricity could allow you to make progress against those broader goals. Finally, consider how your company’s energy consumption is likely to change over time. If major expansions will result in increased electricity consumption, achieving your goals means hitting a moving target.

Understand or establish your company’s renewable energy goals.

Clear renewable energy goals are the primary driver for most large-scale renewable energy procurements by non-utility buyers. If you have or establish renewable energy goals from the start, you can then rely on these goals as a motivator for action throughout the transaction. They will inform the business case you present when building internal support and obtaining intermediate and final approvals for the transaction. 

Your company may have established specific renewable energy goals already. If not, you might derive them from established greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets or other sustainability goals. In cases where those are not established either, it will be necessary to develop renewable energy goals. 

To do so, you might consider the variety of sustainability benefits cited by companies that have executed these transactions.