Companies are increasingly becoming important drivers of demand for renewable energy worldwide. In addition to government mandated renewable energy purchases, which are usually well-tracked for legal compliance reasons, the voluntary demand for renewable energy results in significant investments in green energy worldwide.
Now in its third year, the Corporate Renewable Energy Index (CREX) brings transparency to these voluntary markets.
Global investment in new renewable capacity has continued to rise. In 2011 net investment in renewable power capacity outpaced that of fossil fuel generation ($237bn for renewables versus $223bn for additional fossil fuel generation).
For the CREX, Bloomberg New Energy Finance collects information on the amount and type of renewable energy used by the world’s largest organisations for their own use, and also includes some innovative smaller companies. The CREX ranking is based on the amount of renewable energy procured by the respondents in 2011 (in MWh) as a percentage of their total electricity procurement in the same period. The 2011 results contain over 300 companies from an initial contact list of nearly 1800. Whereas in previous years the CREX was heavily weighted towards developed countries and particularly the US, this year there was a more global distribution of participants. This global CREX report is being released at the same time as six regional focus papers on the US, Brazil, India, Australia, the UK and Germany.
Please download the full report for more detailed analysis.