PPA procurement strategy in 2026 is increasingly shaped by the structural limitations exposed in 2025. For corporate offtakers, the past year marked a transition from viewing PPAs as relatively straightforward price hedges to treating them as instruments that actively redistribute operational and market risk.

In 2025, simple PPA structures still dominated in volume, but their weaknesses became harder to ignore. Declining capture rates, particularly for solar-heavy contracts, reduced the effectiveness of pay-as-produced agreements as long-term cost stabilisation tools. At the same time, rising price volatility and a growing number of zero and negative price hours increased the residual risks left with buyers after contract signature.

Single-asset PPAs exposed corporate buyers to profile risk that was often underestimated at the point of contracting. Mismatches between generation output and consumption profiles translated into higher shaping and balancing costs, eroding the apparent value of otherwise competitively priced agreements. In markets with high renewable penetration, these effects were no longer episodic, but structural.

Against this backdrop, PPA procurement strategy began to evolve. More complex contract structures gained attention not because they were novel, but because they offered partial answers to problems that simple contracts could no longer solve.

Portfolio PPAs, combining generation across technologies, locations, or assets, promised improved alignment between supply and demand. By smoothing delivery profiles, they reduced exposure to extreme pricing periods and mitigated some capture erosion. Hybrid contracts, often pairing solar with wind or storage, further addressed the concentration of generation during low-price hours. For buyers, these structures offered a closer approximation of baseload exposure without fully replicating it.

Battery energy storage systems added another dimension. Storage-linked PPAs introduced optionality, allowing energy to be shifted away from periods of oversupply. This flexibility improved revenue stability and reduced exposure to negative prices, but it also introduced additional layers of contractual, operational, and valuation complexity. Storage assumptions around dispatch strategy, degradation, and revenue stacking became integral to procurement decisions.

These developments altered the role of the corporate buyer. Where procurement teams previously focused on price level, tenor, and guarantees of origin, they are now required to assess structural risk trade-offs. Portfolio composition, counterparty capabilities, and operational interfaces increasingly determine outcomes. In this context, PPA procurement strategy in 2026 becomes less about finding the lowest contract price and more about selecting the most resilient risk configuration.

Complexity, however, comes at a cost. Portfolio and hybrid PPAs often involve longer negotiation cycles, reduced transparency, and heavier reliance on modelling assumptions. Governance processes must adapt to evaluate contracts that cannot be benchmarked easily against standard products. Internal alignment between procurement, risk management, sustainability, and finance functions becomes more critical, as trade-offs are no longer confined to a single objective.

Counterparty selection also gains importance. As contracts embed more operational and structural assumptions, trust and execution capability matter more than ever. Buyers increasingly differentiate between counterparties that can actively manage portfolio risk and those that merely transfer complexity downstream.

The implication for corporate offtakers is not that PPAs are becoming less attractive. Rather, they are becoming more demanding. In 2026, procurement strategy will hinge on how much complexity an organisation is willing and able to absorb in exchange for improved risk distribution. There is no universal optimum. What constitutes an appropriate structure depends on consumption profile, balance sheet strength, internal capabilities, and strategic objectives.

The direction of travel is clear. PPAs are evolving away from simple instruments of price certainty and towards tailored tools of risk engineering. For corporate buyers, adapting procurement strategy accordingly will be central to maintaining control over long-term energy costs in an increasingly volatile power system.

The PPA market review of 2025 and outlook examines how these structural shifts are unfolding across European markets, and what they imply for corporate procurement decisions in the years ahead.

If you are looking to follow how procurement strategies, contract structures, and risk dynamics continue to develop beyond the annual review, you can also sign up to Veyt’s monthly cross-market update covering power, carbon, and renewable markets.