What is it?
On May 6th through 8th of 2025, in what ended up being perfect spring time weather in Minneapolis, MN, the CEBA community gathered for its annual clean energy conference. The Clean Energy Buyers Association (“CEBA”), which is the world’s best and most active community of clean energy customers and energy solutions providers, works to unify market participants to influence and deploy market and policy solutions to accelerate a carbon free energy system. This conference is CEBA’s marquee, annual event featuring industry leaders, subject matter experts, and movers and shakers of all types. The content, thought leadership, and networking make for an unrivaled clean energy industry experience.
While the CEBA community is made up of a wide range of industry professionals, it is driven primarily by the corporate and industrial (energy buyer) community, and there was a noticeable increase in (new) buyer representation this year to go along with the usual mix of energy retailers, developers, and solutions providers. CEBA has been clearly working hard at expanding the pool of clean energy buyers as there were several new members in attendance. The growth of the C&I (energy buyer) segment at CEBA was impressive and a great sign for the industry especially in light of the headwinds that the industry has faced over the last six months.
What Were The Themes This Year?
In the State of the Market presentation by CEBA CEO Rich Powell, it was noted that the C&I voluntary procurement brought “total clean energy deal capacity to 100GW” which shows the collective influence of the voluntary side of the market. In the Asia Pacific region alone, the volume of corporate PPAs is up to 10GWs showing the significance of international clean energy growth, and CEBA is continuing to spread its international wings.
In short, there is no notable slowdown in corporate sustainability and clean energy procurement; if anything, there’s been collective acceleration despite the variety of hurdles that the industry has been facing over the past few years. These challenges include the significant load growth due to AI, EVs, and re-shoring of manufacturing combined with transmission constraints and interconnect challenges and uncertain economy.
Additionally, Rich detailed CEBA’s active policy work including a recent trip by CEBA members to engage Congressional leaders on the importance of clean energy access and impact. Though there is a big emphasis on (US) policy influence, it’s evident based on the content and attendees that CEBA has been courting, CEBA seeks worldwide policy influence. For more information of CEBA’s latest efforts across the board, be sure to consult their blog.
Price and Uncertainty
Outside of the big tech players, for most corporates, energy price is, has been, and remains the biggest factor when thinking about clean energy strategies. For all the new buyers presented there was universal sentiment that budgets are tight and that it’s hard or virtually impossible to justify anything not seen as critical or money making today – making it all the more important for stories and case studies to be shared amongst peers and those farther along in their sustainability journey.
The US tariffs on international imports are creating huge uncertainty for both buyers and sellers, and this is having a cascading effect. It is making it extremely hard for corporates (and suppliers) to plan effectively and hard to budget which makes it easier to do nothing.
In addition to the tariffs, there was a commonly shared fear around the repeal of incentives like tax credits from the IRA and a great sense of shared interest in seeing how keep these in place as their absence could create future complications for new projects penciling out – thereby driving further scarcity and increasing price.
Meanwhile, the clock continues to tick towards the goals that each corporate has set for itself.
Looming Uncertainty of GHGP Scope 2 Update
For those that have been active in the CEBA community for some time, the GHGP Scope 2 update clearly weighed on people’s minds, as the updates being discussed will have market changing effects. The magnitude of change as currently proposed is creating a scare that many corporates will walk back their commitments or abandon the GHG Protocol as their measurement framework all together. Many of the newer corporate members in attendance were not aware that an update was in the works – nor did they have an opinion – which indicates that there is great need for further industry education on these changes.
Noteworthy Panels:
The Future of Scope 3 Accounting: Unlocking the Value of EAC Procurement
Featuring insightful discussion from Drew Crowder of Equinix, Holly Lahd of Center for Green Market Activation, and Wesley Herche of Prologis. This panel explored the challenges in the ambiguity of Scope 3 emissions, particularly for those who want to go above and beyond to decarbonize their supply chain. It was noted that the GHG Protocol is silent on use of RECs for mitigation of Scope 3 emissions (where a panelist noted the initial intent of the guidance was purely for measurement). An audience member from Mars, who has shown great industry leadership, opined that he did not believe that the writers of the initial GHG Protocol envisioned it to restrict creative and impactful voluntary decarbonization efforts therefore allowing corporations to use discretion with their mitigation strategies. Still, there was collective agreement that further clarity and agreement around protocols would benefit everyone.
GHG Protocol Revisions in Focus: Navigating Changes in Scope 2 Accounting
Featuring Brent Morgan of Meta, Devon Sweezey of Google, Doug Miller of Energy Peace Partners, Emma Konet of Tierra Climate, and Peggy Kellen of Center for Resource Solutions. Beginning with a short presentation highlighting the latest “proposal” for new accounting methods, the audience listened carefully before the session moved into a panel discussion featuring heavy audience participation. There were many passionate (loaded?) questions (as well as a few lengthy soliloquies) from attendees unsurprisingly with the stakes of these changes being very high.
Clean Energy Conversations
As in CEBA Summit tradition, attendees had the opportunity to sit and network with industry colleagues for three 25-minute rounds of discussion on a variety of topics that spanned green tariffs, energy storage, PPA and VPPA management, load growth, trends in the market, and many others. This format was widely regarded as one of the best parts of the conference because attendees could choose their topics of interest and go through a short power networking session with intimate and spirited discussions.
At the end of the day, conferences like CEBA are great for learning and for seeing and hearing great new content, but the aspect of CEBA that keeps most attendees coming back is the unrivaled opportunities to network and engage with industry peers. The Clean Energy Conversations and networking breaks are one of the great ways that CEBA enables the community to mingle and thrive – which benefits all members.
What’s Next?
For both SBTi and GHG Protocol, stay tuned for CEBA’s webinars on the latest. Also, mark your calendars for VERGE, the conference co-hosted between CEBA, Bloom, and Trellis (formerly GreenBiz) in October of 2025 in San Jose.
