The market for the direct procurement of energy by commercial and industrial buyers has been active in the U.S. for a decade. In years past, buyers often engaged in such purchases on a voluntary basis to achieve their goals to use renewable energy. These days, C&I buyers are turning to direct procurement or self-supply to obtain a reliable source of energy. Sufficient and accessible energy from a local utility may not be available or may be materially delayed or trigger significant capital costs. This is a material change driven in part by increased demand for electricity, including demand from data centers, EV infrastructure and industrial development.
Because of increased demand as well as other local challenges such as limited grid capacity and interconnection delays, C&I buyers may be required to actively seek a sufficient supply of electricity for their operations. Many C&I buyers have gone farther than seeking a long-term corporate PPA and have undertaken to build their own behind-the-meter facilities to serve their needs. Often these infrastructure projects are constructed and financed independently of the operations they support. Co-located generation allows corporate buyers to bypass inadequate resources, accelerate development and construction, avoid grid congestion and curtailment and more directly manage reliability and the risk of outages. Some buyers are also engaging in strategic partnerships to develop additional generation resources to ensure access to energy for new or expanding operations.
A number of US utilities and IPPs have announced the development of additional gas-fired and renewable generation to meet additional electricity demand. Meanwhile, many C&I buyers are still focused on achieving targets for the use of carbon-free or carbon-neutral sources of supply. According to S&P, 10 GWs of the 11.5 GWs in corporate power purchase agreements executed in the first half of 2025 involve energy from wind and solar projects.1 Other corporate buyers have embraced nuclear and geothermal sources to meet their energy needs. There has also been a significant increase in the use of energy storage to manage generation using various technologies in order to enhance resiliency and try to ensure available energy during outages or natural disasters.
Whether and what types of direct procurement options exist for U.S. C&I buyers depends on a number of factors, including the location of the buyer’s physical operations. State regulatory law controls what types of energy sales outside of traditional purchases from a retail utility are permitted. In some states, such options are quite limited. Provisions allowing the corporate buyer to adopt a method of self-supply are common although not available in all states. There may also be space, physical or meteorological limitations at the applicable buyer’s location. In such circumstances, buyers may turn to virtual products or purchase and retire Renewable Energy Credits or RECs.
There have been some recent changes in state law targeting C&I buyers with significant energy needs. For example, the Power Act recently enacted in Oregon directs the local utility commission to create a new customer class for C&I buyers using at least 20 MW and requires such customers to commit to 10 years and a minimum volume of supply if seeking electricity from the local utility. Legislation seeking to address the impact of high-demand customers including data centers has recently been proposed or enacted in Texas, Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania and California. We expect this trend will continue based on concerns regarding the potential impact on residential customers. Utilities meanwhile are also contending with existing renewable procurement requirements.
Please join the Akin Project and Energy Transition team on Thursday, November 13 at 1:00 p.m. ET for a webinar reviewing the options available to corporate energy buyers, including behind-the-meter projects, interconnected near-site projects, virtual transactions and the purchase of RECs. We will be joined by Monica Testa, VP of Origination & Power Marketing at Gridstor and Elody Samuelson, Manager at SE Advisory Services. We will highlight key goals and challenges from the perspective of both corporate energy buyers and generators, look at recent market and legislative trends and review some important legal and commercial risks that C&I buyers should consider. To register for the webinar, please click here.
1 https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2025/09/the-future-of-energy-balancing-reliability-and-rising-costs
