Avoid market volatility and maintain a predictable budget to hit your sustainability goals with SSAs

This is an opinion piece on why corporate energy strategy shouldn’t feel like a constant hustle, and how Settlement Swap Agreements can help. 

I recently had dinner with a friend who is burning out over his short-term rental investments. He went in dreaming of steady passive income after acquiring and rehabbing some prime coastal locations. What he actually got was off-seasons, dry spells, and unexpected out-of-pocket payments. Worse, the market has cooled. He's completely at the mercy of tourism trends he can't control, and the constant hustle of chasing the next guest is taking a toll.

Listening to him, I realized this is the exact same dynamic corporate treasury teams experience when managing a standard Virtual Power Purchase Agreement VPPA.

VPPAs are necessary for hitting sustainability goals, but financially, they often turn into an exhausting short-term hustle. You're exposed to wholesale energy markets, weather shifts, and changing grid dynamics. When the wind doesn't blow or generation value falls short, you're left with an unpleasant surprise in the form of writing potentially massive settlement checks. And as more renewables hit the grid, project economics are tightening—exactly like a neighborhood flooding with new, competitive Airbnb listings. 

Take it from a veteran in the forecasting world: forecasting is a tough job no matter the industry, but predicting tourism is a breeze compared to the extreme volatility of the power markets. 

At dinner, my friend admitted he would gladly take a predictable, even a negative cashflow position today just to lock in a reliable 2-to-5-year tenant. He wants to eliminate the daily stress and quietly build his equity.

In the corporate energy world, a Settlement Swap Agreement (SSA) does exactly that. An SSA allows a corporate buyer that has purchased a long-term VPPA to sell a portion of its VPPA for shorter durations (typically 1-5 years), while retaining all RECs and environmental attributes. In practice, you’ll sell a trader the market value of power you get from the project, and then get a fixed price in return. 

Think of it as a reliable, long-term tenant. 

Instead of holding the unpredictable market risk and explaining wild budget swings to your finance team, an SSA lets you hand the volatility over to a specialized risk manager. In exchange, you lock in a steady, predictable cash flow (or fixed cost) every month

raul dary, vp of customer experience, resurety

You still claim all the RECs to keep your climate targets on track, but you effectively outsource the market anxiety. With that financial structure in place, you can plan more confidently and support your next renewable project.

Stop playing the short-term rental game with your corporate energy strategy. Is it officially time to retire from the exhausting energy "Superhost" hustle and hand over the keys?