German renewables company BayWa r.e. will tender 10TWh of green electricity later this year, describing the move as a “turning point” for Europe’s power purchase agreement (PPA) market.
The company said it will issue Europe’s first tender initiated by a developer for corporate PPAs, with the energy to come from a portfolio of renewables projects in Germany and Spain.
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It is expected that output from the plants will be shared with several off-takers, which will secure ten-year contracts.
With corporations facing price spikes and increasing uncertainty as they aim to meet their climate commitments, BayWa r.e.’s head of PPA Daniel Parsons said renewable energy “is the only answer”.
“Long-term PPA contracts are a key tool to achieve reliable electricity supply and to enable more renewable energy. It’s brilliant that we’re now able to introduce a tender process to our PPAs in Spain and Germany.”
Scheduled to take place in autumn 2022, the tender’s full terms are currently being finalised, with more information due to be shared by BayWa r.e. later in the year.
The company said it was witnessing high corporate demand for renewable electricity globally, especially in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. This is said to be driven by intensifying sustainability commitments in the face of climate change and customer and investor expectations, as well as Europe’s ongoing energy crisis that has restructured the continent’s PPA market.
Among the offtake agreements announced by BayWa r.e. last year included a deal for what it said was Poland’s first subsidy-free solar park and a virtual PPA for two PV plants in Spain that feature “an innovative price mechanism” that benefits both the asset owner and off-taker during times of high electricity costs.
The company last month signed a PPA with food company Nestlé for the 50MW Picón solar park in central Spain that will generate 62GWh of solar energy per year.
PPA prices in Europe during Q1 were up 27.5% year-on-year as the effects of war in Ukraine deepened the region’s energy crisis and caused upward price pressures, according to research from LevelTen Energy, which provides renewable transaction infrastructure.
The company said “voracious buyer appetite” for PPAs is creating an imbalance between demand for renewables and supply from developers, which are struggling to build new solar projects fast enough due to supply chain, interconnection and regulatory challenges.
Speaking to PV Tech Premium earlier this year, LevelTen’s vice president of Europe, Flemming Sørensen, said he expected to see an emergence of innovative credit structures that enable smaller and mid-sized corporates to access renewable PPAs via aggregation.
Reporting its Q1 results this week, BayWa r.e. posted revenues of €1.6 billion US$1.69 billion), a 141% increase on the same quarter of 2021, thanks in part to high demand for solar modules.