Decarb Connect

Host: Tom Angus, Director of Conferences, Decarb Connect
Guest: Clay Bedwell, Associate Director of Platform and Partnerships, 3Degrees

For years, ambitious corporate renewable energy goals were built on simple targets and Excel spreadsheets. Today, those programs have expanded into complex portfolios spanning physical PPAs, virtual PPAs, spot RECs, green tariffs, and behind-the-meter solar across multiple jurisdictions. What was once a straightforward procurement task has quietly turned into a persistent drain on internal time, budget, and risk capacity.

In this episode, Clay Bedwell outlines why software automation alone cannot solve modern portfolio friction, why customer revenue protection is redefining how organizations buy energy, and how sustainability teams can build a compelling case for portfolio risk management to skeptical CFOs.

Key Takeaways
  • Why corporate renewable portfolios have outgrown traditional spreadsheets.
As organizations accumulate multiple contract types and counterparty arrangements, manual reconciliation becomes unmanageable. Escalating demands from internal stakeholders (spanning P&L impact queries from finance, audit preparation from sustainability, and target reporting from leadership) mean manual data aggregation is no longer operational.
  • Customer revenue protection as a new driver for renewable allocation.
Corporate buyers are no longer procuring renewable energy solely to meet internal target metrics. Using an example from the metals sector, Clay illustrates how commercial customers increasingly demand specific, audited renewable allocations before purchasing products. Demonstrating compliance at the customer level has transformed procurement into a tool for safeguarding revenue.
  • The critical pairing of software platforms with human trading expertise.
While software excels at routine PPA hygiene (such as invoice validation, production tracking, and contract management) it falls short during non-standard edge cases. Managing complex counterparty events, such as developer insolvencies or contract restructuring, requires direct market relationships and real-world trading experience alongside digital tools.
  • How to frame the business case for skeptical CFOs.
Repeatable financial value rarely comes from chasing quick, one-off PPA savings. Instead, the core ROI lies in portfolio risk management: stress-testing downside scenarios, evaluating long-term contract strips, and providing financial leadership with the confidence to scale programs responsibly as standards evolve.
  • Navigating policy shifts and future-proofing buying strategies.
With upcoming changes to the SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard and GHG Protocol Scope 2 guidance, corporate buyers must shift from short-term compliance mindsets to long-term strategic planning. Early adopters are moving away from bloated PPA exposure toward structured portfolio risk models and 24/7 carbon-free energy tracking.
Links

What is Decarb Connect?

Examining the strategies and deployments around decarbonisation in hard to abate sectors, we speak with CEOs, heads of corporate strategy, CTOs, Innovation/R&D, project directors & heads of carbon management from around the world. Hosted by Alex Cameron of the Decarbonization Leaders Network and Decarb Connect & produced by Janno Media.

Clay Bedwell: I think the first thing I do when talking to skeptical CFOs is dispel the notion that there's a bunch of money to be found, and we're just going to come in and dramatically change the financial picture of your program in a repeatable way. I think that happens sometimes; it doesn't happen as often as people want it to happen, and it certainly is not recurring. And so the real repeatable value is portfolio risk management.

Tom Angus: Hello and welcome to the Decarb Connect Podcast. My name is Tom Angus, Director of Conferences here at Decarb Connect. And today, it is my pleasure to be joined by Clay Bedwell, who is Associate Director of Platform and Partnerships at 3 Degrees.

So we have a really interesting discussion ahead of us today. We'll be digging into why so many corporate renewable programs have quietly outgrown those spreadsheets that they were built on, what it actually takes to manage a portfolio of PPAs, VPPAs, and EACs across multiple markets rather than just kind of one deal at a time, and then kind of why Clay and the team at 3 Degrees believe technology alone isn't enough—instead pairing with real trading and advisory expertise. Also kind of getting into where the financial value generally shows up and how to make this case to, I'm sure, many skeptical CFOs out there. So Clay, welcome to the podcast. Lots to unpack there. Let's get straight into it from the top really. For listeners who are hearing about you for the first time and 3 Degrees, and also kind of where does Meridian fit in, it'd be great to get an intro from your side.

Clay Bedwell: Yeah, thanks so much, Tom. Super excited to be here, and thanks for having me.

I'm Clay Bedwell. I lead the go-to-market strategy and execution for 3 Degrees Meridian. And 3 Degrees is a global climate solutions provider. We're a certified B Corp, and we've been managing renewable energy portfolios and helping organizations take urgent action on climate change since 2007.

Meridian is a platform that we built on top of that experience. So it's a portfolio risk management platform for renewable energy buyers and their programs. And this is all backed by our advisory and trading expertise. So it's really designed to deliver financial confidence, operational clarity, and policy readiness as we move into this next era of renewable buying.

Tom Angus: Fantastic. So, I mean, we mentioned we tackle the point around management of EACs and PPAs. You've said that for many companies, this is kind of quietly turning into a constant drain on time, budget, and risk capacity. Before we go anywhere else, I'd love for you to kind of paint a picture of what that actually looks like day-to-day inside one of these companies, just to highlight, I suppose, that drain and kind of where you see the challenges.

Clay Bedwell: Yeah, totally. If you go back in time a bit, Tom, and, you know, look a few years back—5, 10 years—a lot of the companies we work with started with some ambitious targets and some spreadsheets. And now, as you move closer to current time, you know, they've built a portfolio of renewables. And oftentimes, these portfolios are going to span multiple contract types. So it's going to be some physical PPAs, some virtual PPAs, a bunch of spot EACs or spot RECs, maybe some utility-delivered EACs via green tariffs, and they probably have some behind-the-meter solar somewhere. And so they have this pretty complex portfolio and a pretty messy data stack, right? And they're getting these EACs delivered in a variety of ways depending on the contract type and the counterparty. And so they have to reconcile all that, and they're still doing that via spreadsheet.

Simultaneously, they're getting a lot more stakeholder requests, and those stakeholder requests are changing. And so, you know, finance wants to understand how their P&L is going to be impacted in the coming quarters by the various PPAs you hold in different markets. Sustainability is trying to queue you up for an audit process, and they need all the primary documentation. Commercial teams are trying to keep customers happy, and those customers increasingly want to know how you're taking the renewables you've purchased as an organization and assign them to different facilities to decarbonize the products and services you're delivering to them. And then leadership is always asking like, "How are we doing relative to target? Like, are we on track to hit our goal? Are we behind, and what's going on?"

And so these teams are fielding a huge number of requests. A lot of them are bespoke requests, and all of these responses are being stitched together manually using spreadsheets and cross-referenced against electricity data that they need to go find from other stakeholders in the organization.

And I think as these teams navigate this current environment and look towards the future with SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2 being released and start thinking about what these programs will look like in coming years, they're starting to realize that the current arrangement's not tenable, and they really need to think about how do they evolve operationally in order to effectively manage the portfolio risk that is growing day-by-day.

Tom Angus: For sure. Yeah, I think spreadsheets are great. I love a spreadsheet at the best of times!

Clay Bedwell: Me too, it's hard to knock Excel, right? It's one of the great platforms.

Tom Angus: Exactly! But some things, I suppose, are outgrowing that in a way and are bigger than that. And I suppose from your side then, Clay, obviously you've been in this market for two decades. What's fundamentally changed for corporate buyers? How did we get from simply sourcing renewable energy to needing to manage it as a whole portfolio, as you mentioned?

Clay Bedwell: Yeah, it's a really great question. And I think at the high level, the stakes are just higher, right? It's like, as I mentioned earlier, the stakeholders are expecting more and asking for more. Portfolios are getting more complex and more expensive, and all the rules are changing.

And so, just to give you some examples, we work with a large multinational that operates aluminum production facilities—smelters—in various countries. And a lot of their customers are large automobile manufacturers. And those manufacturers want to have renewables allocated to that production of aluminum. Now, the complicated part is that different manufacturers have different requirements for the spec or the specification of renewables that need to be allocated to their production process. And so what this organization is dealing with is, one, they need to procure renewables to hit their own goals, so they have an organization-wide renewable goal, but they also need to buy renewables to keep all their customers happy and protect that revenue. And then they need to be able to effectively allocate and demonstrate to those customers exactly what they've bought, what they've allocated, and provide evidence that is auditable in order to do so.

And so what historically was a pretty simple process of just buying renewables to hit an internal corporate target has now taken on this new dimension where they need to not only keep internal stakeholders satisfied, but they need to protect the revenue customers provide by demonstrating renewable progress they're making at the customer level. And so that's just an example of kind of like the evolving stakeholder requirements. Things like that were not happening 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. This is something that is a fairly new evolution, and we're starting to see it show up in a lot of customer requests. So that's one example.

And another example is just further digging into scenario analyses. Like I think historically, a lot of buyers in this market have operated in kind of a compliance mindset where they go out, they have a few base contracts, they go out every year and buy their spot EACs to hit their targets and move on, and there's not a lot of long-term planning. As we start looking into a new era of buying around more regional contracts, higher quality renewables, being able to demonstrate the 24/7 CFE score of your portfolio, buyers are starting to think more about what are all the options they have available and what are the pros and cons of each one. And we've seen buyers pivot away from building out a very large PPA portfolio that they've already started building towards more of a long-term EAC and REC strip in countries. And that's all based on this scenario analysis and understanding what's going to serve the company best today as well as into the future.

And none of that's really possible in either example without software and being able to organize all of your data in a way that it can be easily analyzed, and also market intelligence—understanding what are the prices for different contract types in different markets today versus what are they tomorrow, and how does that compare to my other options elsewhere.

Tom Angus: For sure. That makes complete sense. And yeah, I mean, you mentioned the software angle there. A lot of vendors will tell buyers that they just need better software, and it's as simple as that. What I love about what I've heard about you guys is you're really intentional and deliberate about pairing the platform with the people. You mentioned yourself there the amount of options available to people and also how quickly we're evolving in this space. Why does it take both? I know we mentioned it briefly there, but why does it take both, and what does that combination actually unlock really in terms of the pairing of platform with people?

Clay Bedwell: Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I think there's this movement in the industry to really tackle everything with software. And I think software unlocks a great number of efficiencies that are otherwise not possible with a standard spreadsheet approach or more manual approach. And so I do want to make the point that really good software is very important, but there's always going to be these edge-case scenarios where software isn't really best suited to solve or manage them.

And I think like a great example of this is PPA management, right? PPA management really comes down to two general processes: You have your standard PPA hygiene, and this is things like invoice validation, production tracking, contract management. These are great tasks for software. Like, software can handle these tasks all day long with no problem. And so that's an example of an area where you can really drive a lot of efficiencies by taking what used to be done on a spreadsheet and some PowerPoint slides and moving it over to a platform.

The second half of PPA management is what I call non-standard scenarios, and these are scenarios where these are typically counterparty-driven. They're typically a lot more material than what you'll find in a typical PPA invoice audit error, and they can't really be handled by software in most cases. Like, an example of this is that we have a client in Europe that has a large portfolio of PPAs. They just found out that one of their developers was going bankrupt. And so they need to make a decision of: Do they stay into that PPA and let it be transferred to whoever takes over that PPA in the future, or is this the opportunity for them to exit the PPA and maybe recoup some expected future loss?

And like, examples like that, you can identify them potentially on a platform, but actually being able to work with that developer that's going out of business and the developer taking over the project, that requires a team. And it requires a team to be able to navigate it quickly enough to be able to seize the opportunity because ultimately, if you're looking for a material change in your PPA performance, one, it's not going to come up that often, and two, when it does come up, it's going to need to be handled with the counterparty. And so you need people on the ground to be able to leverage relationships and take that over for you.

Tom Angus: Fantastic. That's good to hear. I mean, let's talk about that about the bottom line really. And when a company adopts this approach, where does that value actually kind of show up? How do you talk about that honestly with a CFO who I'm sure has some questions when signing this sort of thing off? Like, the way you put it there makes complete sense. But yeah, when communicating that and searching for that value and where we see that, how does that look on your side?

Clay Bedwell: So I think the first thing I do when talking to skeptical CFOs is dispel the notion that there's a bunch of money to be found and we're just going to come in and dramatically change the financial picture of your program in a repeatable way. I think that happens sometimes; it doesn't happen as often as people want it to happen, and it certainly is not recurring. And so the real repeatable value is portfolio risk management.

And I think the reality here is that changing standards will almost certainly force programs' budgets to grow. And the business case is creating effective portfolio risk management to allow your program to grow with confidence from those financial stakeholders.

And so the case to the CFO is: Give the team the tools to evaluate those pricier options with eyes wide open, stress test the downside so being able to do that scenario planning to make sure that they are evaluating all their options and really picking the best choice, and then once you've settled on a solution or a contract type, you know, giving you all the tools to effectively manage it.

And so, you know, what I see today in the market a lot, Tom, is just there's a lot of operational management of programs, but long-term portfolio risk management is just kind of an emerging trend from a handful of buyers. And so the case to CFOs is like, "What tools do we need to really make this program strong in the future and protect against downside risk, and make sure that we're not positioning ourselves for large losses as we make these changes?"

Tom Angus: Yeah, 100%. I mean, you mentioned yourself the changes we've seen in the last kind of five years or so, and that will I'm sure continue to change at that rate, so it makes complete sense to be kind of positioning yourself in the future.

So I mean, as we kind of like wrap up then, I mean, who should be paying particular attention to this right now? I know it seems everyone should have an eye on this, but yeah, who should be paying particular attention? And if something you've kind of described sounds familiar, what is the kind of first step you'd point them to really?

Clay Bedwell: Yeah. And so I think folks that should be interested in this type of solution are anyone on a team that's managing complex, multi-market renewable portfolios. And so these all look a little bit different, but you probably have some PPAs, you're probably buying a lot of unbundled EACs, and you're probably acquiring EACs in other ways, too. And so that's one general group.

Another group is, you know, someone that just feels like their sustainability or renewables team doesn't have a lot of operational clarity—you know, spending a lot of their time on the operational implementation of their program versus strategic planning. And so the folks that are trying to kind of change that ratio between how much time we spend jockeying spreadsheets versus how much time we spend thinking about, you know, what the new SBTi standard means for our future buying, that's one thing to think about.

Same kind of category is folks that don't have a lot of financial confidence in their programs. So when they get a call from internal stakeholders asking, "How much are we going to spend on renewables in 2029?" and they don't have a great answer, you know, I think that would be an audience that would be welcome to speak with us.

And then anybody trying to navigate, you know, the changing policy landscape. You know, I mentioned it a few times, we have new SBTi standards, Greenhouse Gas Protocol is working on a revision to their Scope 2 guidance, and so folks that are trying to figure out how their program goes from today to the future are always welcome to speak with 3 Degrees.

And finally, if you're trying to find us, you can find us at 3degrees.com/meridian. And ultimately, in closing, I think, you know, the message I'd try to say is it's not the most exciting method, but, you know, I'm of the opinion that portfolio risk management and climate leadership are increasingly going to be interlinked. And it's going to be the organizations that are really going to be able to grow their programs are the ones that can effectively manage that risk and have their financial stakeholders be confident that when they spend more money, that they won't be increasing their risk of that portfolio.

Tom Angus: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Clay. It's been an absolute pleasure to hear from you. It's great to hear you discuss a topic area which I'm sure has been guilty of causing a few headaches for a lot of companies. But outlining it with such clarity, I think that's testament to the amazing work you guys are doing at 3 Degrees. So yeah, we'll put the details of yourself and the team in the description of the podcast. But Clay, thanks so much for joining us today. Really excited to keep an eye on the work you guys are doing over the remainder of the year and beyond, but thank you so much for joining us. It's been great to have you.

Clay Bedwell: Yeah, thank you so much, Tom. It's been great being here. It's been a real pleasure.

Tom Angus: Thank you so much. Fantastic. Well, you've been listening to the Decarb Connect Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us, and I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thank you so much.