Even by the standards of an industry well accustomed to market volatility, 2025 brought an imposing array of obstacles. Profound policy headwinds in the US and price-volatility concerns in Europe manifested in a slowdown in corporate PPA deals, with BloombergNEF reporting 2025 as the first year in nearly a decade during which PPA volumes declined year over year. As energy buyers and sellers navigated changing regulations, a tariff blitz, and longstanding development hurdles, the number of unique corporate offtakers declined substantially, too — dropping by more than 50% compared to 2024.
Amid these tough conditions, LevelTen Energy acted to anchor and support the PPA market. Clean energy buyers and sellers looked to LevelTen for the transactional support and market intelligence they needed to ensure the continued success of their sustainability initiatives. Our trusted position at the center of the industry showed up in the numbers: even as industry momentum slowed, LevelTen facilitated 5.4 GW in clean energy deals that supported 160 terawatt-hours of clean energy: enough to power New York City for a full year, three times over. These substantial deals will support the construction of new-build renewable projects that provide an array of local benefits and help address the climate crisis. In 2025, LevelTen was a hotspot in a chilled market — proving that our transactional capabilities, robust network, and real-world data are especially valuable during times of high market volatility and uncertainty.
LevelTen innovations played a crucial role in sustaining deal velocity last year. LEAP™ (LevelTen Energy’s Accelerated Process), which reduces negotiation timelines substantially, enabled portfolios of PPAs to close in as little as 51 days. LevelTen's reputation as a dependable partner was key to moving deals forward. Working with our expansive network of buyers, developers, and advisor partners, we proved that even when the going gets tough, our industry will continue to push the energy transition forward.
A Year of Evolution
We are thrilled by and proud of these successes. That said, LevelTen was far from unaffected by last year's policy volatility. In light of profound regulatory changes in the US, we restructured our company to adapt — a decision we undertook with great care and respect for our team. While a difficult choice, we were able to reach new highs for transacted volumes in Q4 2025, even as a leaner team.
Meeting today's market challenges requires forging new contracting avenues that push procurement forward. As battery energy storage systems (BESS) development grows and more wind and solar projects hybridize by incorporating BESS, scaling hybrid PPA procurements has never been more critical. In 2025, we incorporated hybrid and storage capabilities into the LevelTen platform — where buyers and sellers can now issue, and respond to, hybrid-focused RFPs.
With negative prices in Europe eroding the economics of traditional PPAs there, our Madrid-based team has cemented its role as the industry's hybrid experts, providing the leadership needed to move the market into its next chapter. And while use cases for hybrid deals differ in Europe and North America, accessible contracting routes are needed in both regions. We're excited to continue supporting hybrid and storage adoption across both continents through streamlined transaction infrastructure and ongoing contracting innovation.
As we push forward a wider array of transaction types — including making LEAP™ available for storage procurements — we're doing the same for our data offerings. 2025 saw the launch of version 2.0 of MarketPulse, our flagship data product. Customers can now use MarketPulse to examine PPA and BESS price trends, providing confidence for decision-makers across an even greater variety of deals. LevelTen's pricing insights are produced from high volumes of real PPA, BESS tolling, and other offer types provided directly by the world's largest developer network. Our market intelligence has served as the industry's most trusted source of real-world data for years, and we look forward to further enhancing these offerings in 2026.
2025 also brought the largest-ever overhaul of the LevelTen platform. We rebuilt our technology platform from top to bottom, enabling buyers to go to market more quickly and self-serve with ease. This new foundation also unlocks an array of AI-enabled enhancements that will let LevelTen users surface and analyze data faster and in far more personalized ways. These AI-focused improvements will help deals and decision-making occur more quickly than ever, and we look forward to rolling them out in 2026.
Reducing Data Centers' Carbon Impact
The AI revolution has fundamentally changed the energy landscape. As hyperscalers pursue aggressive development strategies, the economics and deployment timelines for wind, solar, BESS, and other clean energy technologies represent important pieces of the puzzle. Meeting the needs of utilities and regulators, which are increasingly asking data center developers to proactively address the grid impacts of their facilities, has become a top-of-mind concern.
To help address these complex large-load challenges, LevelTen launched Capacity+ last July, giving utilities, hyperscalers, and data center developers a powerful new tool to surface and assemble previously overlooked sources of accredited capacity. Initial Capacity+ processes unearthed significant capacity portfolios across renewable, clean-firm, storage, and demand-response assets that allowed data center projects to maintain, and in some cases accelerate, their operational targets. Moving into 2026, we look forward to announcing a range of complementary powered-land solutions to help our customers win the AI race while holding firm to their low-carbon ambitions.
Innovations Became Reality in 2025
2025 proved that a persistent focus on innovation can truly move the needle on what's possible. Following years of development with the Intercontinental Exchange and other key partners, LevelTen’s Granular Certificate Marketplace went live in October with our first granular certificate (GC) auction, held in PJM.
The GC Marketplace enables corporate buyers and sellers to place orders for clean energy produced at specific hours and in specific grid regions, bringing efficiency and scale to support the next generation of corporate procurement goals. And, crucially, these auctions send entirely new price signals to project developers about the types of generation assets they should build to support tomorrow’s grid. Participation on the GC Marketplace doubled between the first two auctions, helping buyers meet their targets, and quantifying the hourly premium that developers can capture with advanced grid assets.
Our first GC auctions launched on the eve of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) public consultation processes for Scope 2 and consequential methods, which have the potential to profoundly affect voluntary corporate climate action. Regardless of where these standards eventually land, LevelTen will be ready to support offtakers of all sizes in achieving their procurement goals as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
With that said, we believe history shows that aggressive reporting mandates are not necessarily required to drive ambitious corporate climate action. In fact, we are concerned that new standards that could be perceived as overly burdensome actually risk slowing corporate procurement momentum at a critical time in our collective climate journey. As a result, we have formally urged the GHGP committee to refine their standards in a way that strikes an inclusive balance across procurement strategies, and acknowledges that corporate buyers of different sizes have vastly different internal resources to set, and achieve, their climate targets.
Supporting the Next Wave of Clean Energy Professionals
At LevelTen, we know our company is only as strong as the people who power it — and that this holds true for the industry as a whole. In 2025, we were thrilled to welcome our fifth cohort of Energy Scholars to our Seattle office for a summer filled with an enriching, energy-focused curriculum and hands-on learning experiences. We are continually impressed by the acumen and ambition of participating scholars, more than 70% of whom go on to work in the clean energy industry or pursue higher education degrees in the field. LevelTen and our partners remain committed to supporting these important mentorship opportunities to ensure a bright future for our industry, and we look forward to welcoming our sixth cohort of Energy Scholars this summer.
Energized for 2026
2025 was a uniquely challenging period, filled with industry headwinds both long-established and unexpected. Looking back, we see a year of triumph over adversity, and newfound resolve across our sector. At LevelTen, we remain committed to making clean power deals more accessible than ever in 2026. As clean energy developers, buyers, and advisors continue to show up to move the energy transition forward, we'll be here to support them in accomplishing their most ambitious goals — this year and well beyond.
