GPP Webinar: Solar Power Purchase Agreements

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
1:00 to 2:30 p.m. (Eastern time)
EPA's Green Power Partnership (GPP)

The free webinar discussed solar power purchase agreements (SPPAs). An SPPA is a financial arrangement in which a third-party developer owns, operates, and maintains a photovoltaic (PV) system and a host customer (i.e., a business, municipal government, or university) agrees to site the system on its roof or elsewhere on its property and purchase the system's electric output for a pre-determined period. Participants learned:

• How SPPAs can overcome many of the traditional barriers to solar adoption
• The benefits and challenges of an SPPA to the host customer
• The SPPA model's impact on the solar market
• Who is doing SPPAs and why
• Ideal host customer characteristics
• How solar renewable energy certificates (SRECs) ownership affects a host customer's carbon footprint and its ability to make environmental claims
• The steps necessary for a successful SPPA

The mention of any company or product during the Green Power Partnership webinar neither constitutes nor implies endorsement by EPA. EPA recommends that organizations do their own due diligence when evaluating a service or product supplier.

For further information on SPPAs please visit EPA's SPPA website.

View EPA's Top 30 On-site Generation list that represents Partners generating and consuming the most green power on-site within the Green Power Partnership.

Click on the links below to access the presentation slides:

• James Critchfield, U.S. EPA, Solar Power Purchase Agreements: Introduction (pdf) (602.67 KB)
• Mark Culpepper, SunEdison, Markets & Trends: Solar Energy as a Service (pdf) (421.05 KB)
• Mark Buckley, Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Staples, Solar Power Purchase Agreements (pdf) (80.1 KB)
• Answers to questions attendees submitted that were not addressed during the SPPA Webinar Event (pdf) (141.45 KB)