In partnership with LevelTen, Google has established a new, scalable procurement approach that breaks down the barriers of traditional request for proposal (RFP) to benefit both buyers and sellers while accelerating grid decarbonisation.

They have achieved this by zeroing in on two areas of improvement the RFP process and the power purchase agreement (PPA) contract itself.

These changes significantly shorten the start-to-finish time of executing clean energy PPAs. Whereas traditional deals can take more than a year, this innovative approach has already enabled contracting for new additional clean energy in just two months.

CFE transactions are typically negotiated bilaterally or facilitated by RFP with the ultimate goal of signing PPAs. However, traditional RFPs create an information imbalance between buyers and sellers, increase the complexity of negotiations, and can take up to a year to complete.

This creates unnecessary barriers for both buyers and sellers to develop clean energy portfolios, slowing the pace of clean energy deployment and hindering efforts to reduce fossil fuels, reduce pollution, and mitigate climate change.

A significantly faster and easier RFP process for clean energy deals will help in operating on 24/7 carbon free energy. It also stands to do much more for the power industry broadly by helping standardise the buying and selling of clean energy. This makes it easier for all types of end-use buyers to purchase new additional carbon free energy and expands the marketplace to create access for smaller sellers to participate.