Clean Energy Deals Decline, Big Tech Leads Market

In 2025, global corporate clean energy deals, measured in power purchase agreements or PPAs, fell to about 55.9 gigawatts, roughly 10 percent below the record set in 2024. That might not sound like a huge drop, but it’s the first decline in nearly nine years. BloombergNEF’s 1H 2026 Corporate Energy Market Outlook tracks this pretty closely, you'll find links to all sources below.

Why the slowdown? Partly it’s rising power prices and policy uncertainty. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, deal volumes slid about 13 percent to roughly 17 gigawatts, going back to levels we last saw in 2023. Negative pricing episodes and changing regulations made standalone solar and wind deals less appealing unless they were paired with storage or other firm energy sources.

Tech Giants Keep Buying

Here’s the kicker: even as overall activity slowed, the big tech names kept at it. Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft together accounted for almost half of all corporate PPA volume in 2025, buying roughly 20.4 gigawatts themselves. Meta and Amazon led the pack, with Meta focused on the US and Amazon across Europe and Asia Pacific.

Smaller buyers, though, pulled back. In the US only 33 companies signed new deals, about half of the number from 2024. So while the big players are moving full speed ahead, mid-tier and smaller firms are more cautious.

Different regions, different stories

In Asia Pacific, corporate PPA volume fell from 10.7 gigawatts in 2024 to about 6.9 gigawatts in 2025. India and South Korea saw slower activity, though Japan kept some momentum through long-term virtual PPAs. In the US, 29.5 gigawatts of deals went through, often with a mix of renewables and firm generation like hydro or nuclear to keep data centers running consistently.

Meanwhile, big names aren’t just signing the usual solar or wind PPAs. Google and TotalEnergies, for example, finalized a combined 1-gigawatt solar deal in Texas that’s expected to supply roughly 28 terawatt-hours of clean electricity over 15 years. Equinix inked a 15-year, 121-megawatt solar virtual PPA in Japan for its data centers.

Battery storage is also playing a bigger role now. Costs for a four-hour system fell about 27 percent in 2025 to around $78 per megawatt-hour, making hybrid deals that combine renewables with storage much more viable.

The Takeaway

So early 2026 sees a market that’s moving at two speeds. Big tech companies are still signing huge, long-term deals to lock in green power. Smaller buyers are hesitating, taking a step back because of costs and policy uncertainties. The headline numbers show a decline, but if you look closer, the market is more nuanced than it first appears.