A project is only real if someone wants to buy from it at the right price. That single condition - firm demand - separates climate tech that scales from climate tech that stalls. And it's why corporate offtake has become one of the most consequential levers in the clean energy transition.
That's the premise of our new report, Offtake to Online: How Corporates Drive Innovation, produced in partnership with HSBC. It maps where corporate demand is coming from, how large it could get, and what it actually takes to turn a sustainability commitment into a contract that moves a project, and in turn, a market. Download it here.
What is a corporate offtake agreement?
A corporate offtake agreement is a contract in which a buyer commits to purchase a specified volume of output — power, fuel, material — from a project, typically before or during construction. In climate tech, these agreements do more than guarantee revenue. Firm offtake commitments are the primary instrument for de-risking first-of-a-kind (FOAK) projects — technologies that have been proven at lab or pilot scale but haven't yet been built at commercial scale, unlocking later-stage financing including project finance and debt.
Beyond capital, offtake provides something harder to quantify: feedback, test runs, and the kind of market credibility that brings in additional customers. A corporate buyer's name on a contract tells lenders, suppliers, and the rest of the market that the technology is real and the project is worth backing.
The five sectors where corporate offtake matters most
The report covers five sectors in depth: renewables, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), steel, cement, and chemicals. The picture across all five is a patchwork of progress.
Renewables. Companies buying renewable electricity under the RE100 initiative have reached 42% of their 100% target, with access tightening as demand grows. Scaling to 100% renewable electricity by 2040 would require procurement to reach around 544 TWh, a significant increase from current volumes. The report breaks down where that procurement gap is largest by region and buyer type, and which contract structures are best suited to close it.
SAF. Rising blending mandates make long-term supply agreements increasingly critical. 2030 SAF blending targets imply demand of roughly 5.2Mt from major carriers, against around 250kt consumed today. The gap between mandated demand and available supply is the central risk — and the central opportunity. The report covers how airlines are structuring early supply agreements to lock in capacity before blending mandates tighten, and what feedstock and certification requirements those contracts typically require.
Steel. Buyers clubs like the First Movers Coalition helped kickstart corporate offtake for low-carbon steel, but the market is mostly recycled content for now. Hydrogen-based steel production has stalled, and corporate demand alone hasn't been enough to move projects to FID without stronger policy backing. The report examines what a credible offtake structure for green steel looks like today, and what policy conditions would accelerate it.
Cement and chemicals. Both sectors face the same structural challenge: very little low-carbon optionality exists yet at commercial scale, so most corporate commitments remain conditional rather than firm.
Overall, where low-carbon options exist and policy supports them, corporate procurement follows. Where they don't, most companies default to less binding agreements — a promise to buy if and when conditions align. Learn more in the report.
Types of offtake agreements: structures and trade-offs
Not all offtake is the same. The report maps the main structures, what each is designed to do, and the full checklist of what each requires, like standards, certifications, implementation requirements, and market coverage.
Power purchase agreements (PPAs). The most established structure in clean energy. Long-term contracts that fix a price for electricity, giving buyers certainty and developers a bankable revenue stream. The original solar and wind PPAs succeeded in part because they offered price certainty in volatile electricity markets,, not because they were cost-competitive on day one.
Advance market commitments (AMCs). Used to signal demand at scale before supply exists, most prominently in carbon removal. Frontier, the $1bn AMC backed by Stripe, Google, Shopify, and others, is the clearest example of how collective corporate demand can accelerate a nascent market.
Book and claim. A certificate-based structure that decouples the physical commodity from the sustainability attribute, allowing buyers to claim credit for low-carbon production without direct supply chain integration. Common in SAF and biofuels.
Indexed and take-or-pay offtake. Structures designed to give buyers flexibility on pricing while giving projects revenue certainty. Take-or-pay requires the buyer to pay for a minimum volume regardless of whether they take delivery, providing the predictable cash flow that makes project debt possible.
Structures that guarantee both price and volume are the most bankable. They also typically require policy mandates or government subsidies working in the background to make the economics viable.
Four patterns that hold across every sector
1. Early partnerships secure access to competitive markets
Many procurement mandates target dates that are a decade or more away. But capacity takes years to build. Companies that haven't secured supply early risk paying the highest prices for constrained supply when mandates bite. The case for early offtake — even at a premium — is that it ensures supply will exist in time and starts the technology on its cost curve. Sales channel partnerships, preferential supply agreements, and colocation all reduce project execution risk alongside offtake itself.
2. Cost is not the only consideration
Almost no early-stage offtake is cost-competitive on a pure dollar basis. But co-benefits still drive procurement: supply chain risk hedging, deployment speed, supply certainty in compliance-driven markets. The first solar and wind PPAs weren't cheap — they were strategically rational. The same logic applies today to advanced geothermal, long-duration storage, and clean hydrogen.
3. Data centers are some of the best offtakers FOAK has ever seen
Hyperscalers are price-insensitive, experienced in energy procurement, and under pressure to move fast on clean firm power. They are already signing deals for enhanced geothermal, long-duration storage, and advanced nuclear at $107-150/MWh. For any clean firm power developer, this is the most accessible path to FID right now. The combination of deep pockets, reputational urgency, and genuine load growth makes hyperscalers a structurally different kind of offtaker from the ones that existed five years ago.
4. You can't escape policy
The strongest offtake agreements are backed by procurement mandates — the UK and EU's SAF blending requirements being the clearest current example. Even voluntary carbon offset purchases were driven largely by the expectation that carbon pricing or climate risk disclosure would eventually make them mandatory. Corporates push markets forward, but policy typically creates them. Without a credible regulatory backstop, most corporate buyers will stay in conditional-agreement territory indefinitely.
Case studies: how these deals actually get done
The report includes detailed case studies on how Google and Fervo Energy structured their enhanced geothermal offtake, how IAG and Infinium moved a SAF supply agreement from MOU to contract, and how Form Energy and Crusoe Energy aligned on long-duration storage procurement. The intent is to give corporate buyers a practical playbook for evaluating their options, and give technology developers a clear view of what corporates actually need from a deal.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a corporate offtake agreement bankable?
Bankability comes down to certainty of revenue. Lenders need confidence that a project will generate enough cash to service debt. The most bankable structures fix both price and volume — typically through a long-term PPA or take-or-pay contract with a creditworthy counterparty. Government-backed offtake or policy mandates that underpin demand add another layer of confidence. AMCs and soft commitments, while valuable for market signaling, generally don't satisfy lender requirements on their own — though stacking them with other instruments can help. A developer might pair a conditional AMC with a DOE loan guarantee, for instance, using the AMC to demonstrate demand and the loan guarantee to satisfy lenders on downside protection.
How do offtake agreements differ across FOAK vs. mature technologies?
For mature technologies like utility-scale solar and wind, PPAs are standardized and lenders are comfortable with the revenue model. For FOAK projects — technologies proven at lab or pilot scale but not yet built at commercial scale — offtake has to work harder. Deals often combine a price floor with volume flexibility, supplemented by grants, loan guarantees, or other de-risking mechanisms. The deal structure has to compensate for higher perceived technology and execution risk.
Why are data centers driving so much clean energy offtake right now?
Three reasons: load scale, speed requirements, and reputational pressure. Hyperscalers are adding gigawatts of load faster than the grid can accommodate it, which pushes them toward direct procurement. They also face significant scrutiny on the emissions profile of AI infrastructure, which creates internal pressure to sign clean firm power deals even at above-market prices. And unlike many corporate buyers, they have the procurement sophistication and balance sheet to execute complex contracts.
What role does policy play in corporate offtake for FOAK technologies?
Policy is the backbone. The clearest examples are SAF blending mandates in the UK and EU, which transform what would otherwise be a voluntary purchase decision into a compliance requirement. Even in sectors without mandates, the anticipation of future policy — carbon pricing, disclosure requirements, supply chain due diligence rules — motivates early procurement. Voluntary corporate commitments and policy are not substitutes; they work together, with corporate demand often arriving just ahead of the mandate that makes it universal.
What is book and claim, and when does it make sense?
Book and claim is a certificate-based system that separates the physical commodity from its sustainability attribute. A buyer in one location can claim credit for low-carbon production that occurred elsewhere, without a direct physical supply chain connection. It makes sense when direct supply chain integration is impractical — common in aviation fuels and shipping, where the global movement of product makes attribution difficult. It's a pragmatic structure, though it carries more reputational risk than direct offtake because the link between buyer and producer is less visible.
How should a project developer approach finding a corporate offtake partner?
Start with buyers who have both the mandate and the sophistication to move. RE100 members in industries facing compliance deadlines, hyperscalers building out AI infrastructure, and industrials with public net-zero commitments are the most likely near-term counterparties. Match the offtake structure to what the buyer actually needs — price certainty, supply security, or regulatory compliance — rather than leading with what the project wants. And build in flexibility: conditional agreements can be a starting point, with a clear path toward firmer commitments as the project de-risks.
Offtake to Online: How Corporates Drive Innovation is available to download now from the Currence reports page. Get the report here.
