Covid-19 pandemic has dimmed the clean power market

For all the lives lost and economic damage done by the coronavirus pandemic, it’s also managed to hurt efforts to combat climate change.

Corporate demand for clean electricity is declining for the first time because more employees are working from home than ever before. This is most notable for companies in the RE100, which have all pledged to offset 100% of their electricity consumption with clean energy.

Ninety-four of the 222 RE100 companies that have disclosed electricity demand data for both 2019 and 2020 reported drops in their consumption as they adjusted to remote work environments last year, said Kyle Harrison, a New York-based corporate energy strategist at BloombergNEF.