Corporations in Asia Pacific are set to contract a record 7GW of renewable capacity in 2022, an 80% increase on 2021, according to analysis from Wood Mackenzie.
The increase is partly due to markets in the region emerging from pandemic-related disruptions and decarbonisation targets.
Wood Mackenzie found that corporate renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) are becoming increasingly attractive as prices have come down.
The levelised cost of electricity (LCoE) for utility-scale solar, commercial solar and onshore wind has fallen by 4.9%, 14.2% and 8.6% respectively since 2019.
In the same period, liquified natural gas has become 2.4 times more expensive, while the price of crude oil has more than doubled and coal has become more than four times as expensive.
As a result, renewable power costs are 46% below average industrial end-user tariffs in 2022.
Solar dominates corporate renewable procurement in Asia Pacific, accounting for 57% of the region’s contracted corporate PPAs to date.
Wind has been catching up since 2020 and accounted for 44% of new contracts in the region in the first half of 2022, Wood Mackenzie found.
Within countries, the market share of different technologies “varies considerably”.
Solar and wind are almost equally popular in Australia, accounting for 45% and 43% of PPA contracts respectively.
In India solar dominates, accounting for 82% of contracts.
Wood Mackenzie found the situation is reversed in Taiwan where offshore wind has rapidly become the dominant technology behind PPAs, making up 89% of total capacity.
For the rest of south-east Asia and East Asia, solar accounts for nearly all contracted capacity.