Corporate energy buyers bought 21.7 gigawatts of renewable energy in 2024, an annual record that boosted additions to the U.S. electric grid from such transactions to 100 gigawatts since 2014. That’s according to the Clean Energy Buyers Association’s 2024 Deal Tracker.

For context, 1 gigawatt of electricity can support 750,000 U.S. households for one year. 

Just shy of three percent of all renewable generation on the U.S. grid is attributable to some sort of corporate transaction, according to CEBA. The analysis considers publicly reported deals that are at least 20 megawatts in capacity; at least 235 companies have announced deals since 2014. 

Companies negotiate voluntary power purchase agreements and other sorts of contracts with utilities for clean energy so they can use them to reach renewable energy goals and claim greenhouse gas emissions reductions. This practice has become more popular over the past five years.

Key takeaways from CEBA’s latest analysis:

• The Sun rules: Solar power accounted for the vast majority of the 2024 purchases — 73 percent — despite ongoing permitting and grid interconnection delays.
• Nuclear surprises: Companies procured 1.5 gigawatts from nuclear facilities, about 6.7 percent of total (compared with 7.7 percent for wind). Nuclear energy wasn’t even mentioned in the 2023 Deal Tracker summary. Both Microsoft and Amazon have signed high-profile deals in the past 12 months.
• Batteries bloom: There was a 300 percent increase in capacity during 2024, accounting for 7.7 percent of capacity added.
• Geothermal firsts: Google’s 115-megawatt contract with Fervo in Nevada made the list. It uses a new type of tariff to insulate other customers from the cost of investing in an emerging technology.
• Interest continues to grow: 20 new companies finalized a deal in 2024, fewer than the 28 in 2023 but still notable growth.
• Half the contracted capacity is operational: 54 gigawatts have been switched on.

What’s ahead

While the Trump administration’s policies favor fossil fuels over renewable generation, clean electricity capacity continues to grow rapidly along with overall global energy demand. The world’s energy appetite surged 2.2 percent in 2024, faster than the average demand growth of 1.3 percent between 2013 and 2023.

Low-emissions generation sources covered most of the capacity increases last year, according to the International Energy Agency. Total worldwide capacity is now around 700 gigawatts. Nuclear power capacity reached its fifth highest level in the past five decades, IEA reported.

Tech companies building out massive data centers for artificial intelligence are at the center of this controversial growth. While CEBA’s report doesn’t disclose or discuss specific companies, Amazon was the single-biggest corporate buyer in 2024 — for the fifth year in a row. 

The tech company has invested in 600 projects to date, including ones in states like Louisiana and Mississippi that have proportions of high-emitting fossil fuels as generation sources. In the latter state, projects backed by Amazon account for 24 percent of solar electricity on the grid.

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A new United Nations mechanism for validating high-quality carbon credits has announced its first approval, but carbon experts aren’t celebrating. The inaugural project is seen by many as flawed, and its inclusion highlights a challenge to the mechanism’s integrity goals.

Plans for the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) were finalized last November at the COP negotiations in Azerbaijan, allowing project developers to begin applying for PACM approval. A quality label backed by the UN could be a welcome addition to the carbon market, where many buyers lack the resources to undertake the due diligence necessary to identify high-quality credits. In some cases, companies have been publicly named as purchasers of “junk” credits that generate little or no climate benefit. 

Following a meeting of the PACM supervisory body last month in Bhutan, we know now the first project to receive the mechanism’s approval: A Myanmar-based scheme that distributes fuel-efficient stoves to communities that cook using wood fires. Switching to improved stoves reduces the quantity of wood the recipients use, reducing deforestation and emissions.

What’s considered sustainable?

The general principle behind cookstove projects is generally considered sound, but the specific project that the PACM approved is not. Calyx Global, an independent rater of carbon credits, last week ranked the project in Tier 3, the lowest of its categories. 

One of the problems with the methodology the project follows is what’s called “non-renewable biomass,” explained Calyx Co-Founder Donna Lee. When estimating climate benefits, project developers must account for wood that will grow back and so should be considered sustainable. Under the methodology used in Myanmar, this estimate was left up to project developers, who had an incentive to downplay the amount of sustainable harvesting in order to maximize the purported impact of the stoves.

The methodology, which was developed by the non-profit Gold Standard, was also rejected this month by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, another important arbiter of carbon market quality.

This inauspicious start stems from a compromise made as countries haggled over plans for the PACM. China, India and other nations successfully lobbied for credits generated under a previous UN-based scheme, known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), be allowed to apply for PACM approval. The transition window closes at the end of this year, when new and much more stringent rules will be introduced, said Lambert Schneider, a climate policy expert at the Oeko-Institut in Germany and a member of the group crafting the rules. “I’m very confident that such a project wouldn’t pass the new rules,” he added, referring to the Myanmar cookstove credits.

Better baselines

Schneider hopes that the PACM will insist on tough rules governing baselines, for example. To estimate the quality of emissions that a project avoids or remove, developers develop a baseline to compare it to. Many standard-setters allow a “business as usual” approach, in which the impact of the project is compared to the status quo. Schneider is pushing for PACM to insist on a “downward adjustment,” which factors in ongoing changes in the region where the project is based, such as the decarbonization of the grid. He’s also advocating for project developers to be required to apply for credits before they start work, rather than retroactively identifying projects that might qualify for credits.

Yet large quantities of low-quality credits may gain PACM approval before those rules get implemented. More than 1,000 CDM projects have applied for PACM status. Large-scale renewable energy projects dominate the list, according to a 2025 analysis by the NewClimate Institute in Germany. Many of these projects would have been completed without carbon credit funding, meaning they lack what’s known in carbon markets as “additionality.” 

Schneider estimates that low-integrity credits representing hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide could eventually be approved in this way. If they do, he added, buyers should scrutinize the label on PACM credits to determine whether the project was a transfer from the CDM or approved under the new rules.

That kind of due diligence is always worthwhile due to the wide variability in carbon credit quality. Almost all cookstove projects rated by Calyx fall into Tier 2 and 3, for example, but Lee noted that the concept as a whole is not flawed. Indeed, if the problems with the non-renewable biomass estimate were addressed, the majority would shift into Tier 1 and 2. “They can be good projects that have really wonderful sustainable development benefits to women and children and human health,” she said.

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The new draft of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) corporate net zero standard acknowledges the critical role of companies in mobilizing climate finance and proposes a larger role for market-based climate action tools, such as carbon credits, to accelerate progress. But the proposed updates fall short of what’s needed to meet the scale and timeline of the climate emergency. 

Carbon credits appear in two sections of the draft. First, the draft proposes new near-term carbon removal targets for residual emissions, but only for Scope 1. Second, it proposes stronger incentives for companies to mitigate ongoing emissions on the road to net zero, but leaves this mechanism both optional and vague. 

The draft is not final. SBTi has opened a public consultation period through June 1, 2025.

Removal targets now included 

The draft proposes new interim targets for carbon removal to neutralize residual Scope 1 emissions. Residual emissions are those left at the net zero year, after companies implement all possible emission reduction measures. In most cases, they’ll make up 10 percent or less of baseline emissions. 

To achieve net zero status, companies need to purchase and retire carbon removal credits annually beginning in their net zero year, to neutralize their residual emissions. 

The current net zero standard has no requirement that companies begin funding carbon removal prior to their net zero year — typically around mid-century — nor to estimate what their future removal needs will be. The new draft proposes a more proactive approach, introducing both near- and long-term removal targets that would require companies to ramp up carbon removal purchases on the path to net zero.   

Source: Carbon Gap 2023, Who Can Pay for Carbon Removal?

Scope 1 only

But the draft limits removal targets to Scope 1 emissions only. While near-term targets of any kind are a welcome step, as written they will not not make a major difference in scaling carbon removal, according to Robert Höglund, co-founder of CDR.fyi, a carbon removal market data platform, and a member of SBTi’s technical advisory group. 

That’s because large Scope 1 emitters are less likely to set SBTi targets. Indeed, SBTi will not currently validate targets for companies with direct involvement in fossil fuel extraction. Meanwhile, the bulk of emissions from SBTi-participating companies come from Scope 3 sources. 

Interim removal targets for Scope 1 emissions could create demand for up to 2 million carbon removal credits by 2030 from current SBTi participants, according to an analysis from Isometric, a carbon removal registry. Unfortunately, that’s not nearly enough to bring the planet in line with a net zero pathway by mid-century, a goal that will require gigaton-scale removal. 

What’s more, high Scope 1 emitters typically have the least ability to pay for carbon removal, as they have the thinnest profit margins per ton of emissions. Meanwhile, downstream companies with high profit margins per ton of emissions — such as finance, professional services and technology — have much lower Scope 1 emissions but higher Scope 3. These companies have a unique role to play in helping to scale carbon removal.

SBTi’s reason for not including projected residual Scope 2 or 3 emissions in interim targets is twofold: companies will eliminate all energy generation emissions (Scope 2) by their net zero years, and estimating residual Scope 3 emissions is complex, based as it is on value chain action. But leaving Scope 3 out of interim removal targets means the lion’s share of residual emissions from companies participating in SBTi will remain unaddressed. 

Simplify the calculations  

There’s a simple mechanism to solve the complexity problem. Assuming Scope 3 emissions decrease by 90 percent by mid-century, in line with overall emission reductions, that would leave companies with around 10 percent of their baseline Scope 3 emissions to neutralize at their net zero year. Interim near-term removal targets could start there. 

A simplified calculation like this would avoid placing new, burdensome emissions calculations on participating companies while recognizing the reality of the scope of carbon removal needed to hit climate targets. 

How to address ongoing emissions

Companies will continue to release ongoing emissions on the decades-long path to net zero. They differ from residual emissions, which companies can’t eliminate and will need to neutralize via removals. Both have a large climate impact that will compound year over year for decades. 

The current standard encourages companies to undertake beyond value chain mitigation (BVCM) to minimize the impact of their ongoing emissions, but there’s no requirement nor recognition for doing so. 

Beyond Value Chain Mitigation (BVCM)

Source: SBTi 2024, “Above and Beyond on BVCM”

SBTi’s stated reason for not requiring mitigation of ongoing emissions is that it is aiming to “remain inclusive for companies with varying resources.” This is a surprising explanation. SBTi has never, to my knowledge, mentioned inclusivity as one of its guiding principles. Its publicly stated purpose is to define best practices for science-aligned climate action consistent with limiting warming to 1.5℃ — with no mention of cost. 

The draft says the initiative is seeking new ways to incentivize companies to address ongoing emissions. But this section is among the most vague in the document. Exactly what form this additional recognition will take for companies that choose to mitigate ongoing emissions isn’t defined. 

Similarly, the method by which companies can address their ongoing emissions is also left undefined, but will likely follow one of the options described by SBTi in its report on this topic last year. They are a money-for-ton (or ton-for-ton) approach and using carbon credits to funnel investment into projects that accelerate global climate progress.  

A framework that unleashes climate finance

SBTi is clearly listening. Adding interim carbon removal targets and strengthening recommendations around mitigating ongoing emissions are signs the body is heeding the steady drumbeat of requests from the climate community to open up all mechanisms for global climate action. 

But the draft, as written, hamstrings itself. Including Scope 3 in interim carbon removal targets, and requiring action on ongoing emissions, would transform SBTi’s net zero standard into a mechanism that could unleash one of the most powerful untapped tools for climate action: private finance. 

The post 2 ways to strengthen SBTi’s new net zero draft appeared first on Trellis.

Waste was already baked into apparel business models long before social media influencers made styles lose their coolness on a weekly rather than a seasonal basis. But even as fast fashion drives unprecedented waste, many brands, retailers and startups are slowly advancing circular business models that keep garments in use.

New software startups are rescuing less-than-perfect items, revealing details through artificial intelligence about how brands, retailers and consumers behave. These emerging services are pitching new efficiencies that help to restore or customize clothes, shoes and accessories that otherwise go stale in warehouses, closets or landfills.

In New York, Alternew seeks to streamline consumer repairs and alterations, while Revive is flipping returned goods into new sales for brands. Other repair and refurbishment ventures: Suay Sew Shop formed in 2017 in Los Angeles; Mendit opened in 2019 in Houston; Sojo formed in London in 2020, as did ReCircled in Denver; and Circulo came to life in the U.K. in 2024. And this past February, the Loom app debuted to connect people with designers to “upcycle” their clothes. Tersus Solutions spiffs up used clothes and shoes for scores of branded resale portals.

Of course, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s long ago set the bar in retail by offering customers alterations at most stores. And starting 20 years ago, brands such as Levi’s, Patagonia and The North Face launched free or low-cost repair programs, while more recently Ralph Lauren, Arc’teryx, Dr. Martens, Timberland and Reformation have followed. Meanwhile, in addition to its no-cost consumer repairs, Eileen Fisher offers special Mended collections that concoct new garments out of spare parts from old ones.

Low-hanging opportunities

All of these companies are pursuing a share of repair as a business opportunity, one that is attracting even more interest lately as tariffs bring turmoil to supply chains and legislation here and abroad around end-of-life textile management adds pressure on brands.

• The market for fashion repairs, which has been growing by 2.5 percent annually, will expand from $3.6 billion in 2024 to $4.5 billion by 2033, according to Business Research Insights.
• Circular business models, including repairs and reuse, could reach $700 billion by 2030, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation projected in 2021. That’s more than 20 percent of the worldwide fashion market.
• As clothing production has doubled in the first 15 years of this century, the average number of times that someone wears a garment has dropped by 36 percent.

“Even with production separated from consumption, the negative impacts of fashion’s environmental footprint are becoming harder to ignore,” said former Timberland executive Ken Pucker, a business instructor at Tufts and Dartmouth universities. “Images of trashed clothing, consequences of microfiber release and accelerating carbon emissions compromise the planet and, ultimately, the viability of the industry.”

Recent research has quantified that repairs have more power than secondhand sales to prevent or delay new purchases. Eighty-two percent of repair services displace the purchase of a factory-fresh garment, compared with 60 percent for resale services, according to the nonprofit Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). It saves 16 pounds of CO2, roughly equivalent to driving a gasoline car for 20 miles, to repair a cotton T-shirt instead of buying a new one, the report found.

Alternew: connecting brands, consumers and tailors

“There’s a landfill out there with my name on it that I’m personally responsible for,” jokes Nancy Rhodes, cofounder and CEO of Alternew. The former footwear designer’s creations, including for Beyoncé’s House of Dereon and Kenneth Cole, sold at Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Marshall’s and Costco.

Now she’s building a matchmaking service for brands, consumers and tailors. Alternew, which captured $2 million in pre-seed funding in September, is working on a pilot with New York womenswear label Faherty. Brands Everlane and Moose Knuckles are interested in partnering, too.

Retailers spend hundreds of billions of dollars on “returns and churns,” and brands spend billions to lure customers to the register only to lose them after the sale, she noted. “Seventy percent of all apparel returns are due to poor fit,” Rhodes said. “The fashion industry has a 26 percent retention rate when using care and repair services as a brand. There’s data from the market that says a customer is 73 percent more likely to go back to the store within the year based on the services.”

Rhodes described a shopping experience that Alternew would prevent: You try on a pair of pants in a store, but they’re too long, so you walk out empty handed. “Instead of losing the sale, the store associate logs an alteration request immediately [on Alternew], matching you with a local, vetted tailor on our platform, you get a text notification with appointment details, pricing, and then real-time updates.”

That’s an opening for brands to differentiate themselves, according to Rhodes: “Care and repair are an intrinsic core solution to creating an authentic, holistic and circular experience for the consumer.”

Alternew can also provide companies new insights into their merchandise. For instance, maybe 20 zippers on a denim jacket broke across the country, or a high percentage of New England buyers hemmed wide-legged linen pants by 4 inches.

And Rhodes bets that by making it easier for consumers to hem pants or seal busted seams, more people will continue wearing their favorite brands.

“We started by creating a business in a box for tailors, and that allows us to get proprietary data that doesn’t exist today, so we can match the right tailor with the right product,” she said. “Because the tailor that hems a pair of jeans isn’t necessarily the same tailor that’s going to take in a Gucci blazer. Customers get a perfect fit, and tailors get new clients.”

Revive: Making repairs at scale

Revive originated out of Hemster, a repair and alterations startup founded in 2017 that has serviced Zara, Diane von Furstenberg and Reformation. Yet Co-founder and CEO Allison Lee swerved in a different direction in 2022, when she noticed brand warehouse managers using the service’s business-to-consumer repair portal to process dead stock and damaged goods. 

Said Lee: “That’s really how we accidentally discovered this huge problem that brands seem to have around their inventory and debt, the damages and returns and such.”

After raising $3.5 million in seed funding last June, Revive became profitable at the end of 2024. Lee said it processed 500,000 units last year, which could triple in 2025. “There’s a lot of tailwind we’re feeling right now,” she said, as brands reevaluate their supply chains due to tariffs.

Source: Trellis Group / Elsa Wenzel

Brands create $740 billion of unproductive inventory annually, “the equivalent of every single unit sold on Amazon going directly to landfill,” Lee said. Yet companies only write off one-tenth of their inventory.

Brands often categorize returned items as “damaged” despite what are often trivial issues, including cat hair, wrinkles, a tear in the plastic wrap or a dent in the shoebox. Instead of recycling or donating those goods, Revive cleans, sews, re-tags and repacks them. Revive can help brands sell 95 out of 100 items it processes, according to Lee. The company re-routes the remainder for recycling or donations. 

Revive, which takes a fee for the logistics and a commission for each sale, sits between brands and several third-party logistics companies across the U.S. It moves merchandise in a few weeks that might otherwise rot in a warehouse for a whole season. The service combines its inventory records with pricing data from 30 sales channels, including Macy’s, Nordstrom, eBay and Poshmark, in addition to influencers who livestream sales.

“We basically look at this clean system on record and we’re like, oh, Michael Kors handbags sell really well on Whatnot, but the shoes sell better on Poshmark,” Lee said of patterns Revive’s artificial intelligence reveals.

“The sustainability narrative puts too much pressure on consumers to buy better and throw out less,” Lee said, but the bigger impact is in reducing business waste. “The items that I’m getting from the brand equal a million people reselling their goods, and that’s coming from like four brands.”

[Connect with the circular fashion community and gain insights to accelerate the shift to a circular economy at Circularity, April 29-May 1, Denver, CO.]

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