The Beurs van Berlage, a former commodities exchange on the avenue between Amsterdam’s central train station and main square, was built more than a century ago so the city’s merchants had somewhere to agree on prices. But the 1,400 or so people who filled the cavernous red-brick hall on Nov. 4 and 5 came to negotiate deals for renewable electricity, a commodity whose price falls below zero for a growing number of hours each year.

The 10th edition of RE-Source, organized by SolarPower Europe and WindEurope through their joint RE-Source Platform, brought more than 350 corporate energy buyers to some 400 prescheduled meetings with suppliers. But the deal flow they were chasing is thinning: the RE-Source Platform said corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) have secured 5.9 GW of renewable capacity in Europe so far in 2026, down 9.7% on the same period last year.

Francesco Rossetto, a policy officer at the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), presented the agency’s annual PPA assessment and described “a market that is cooling down a little bit.” He said activity peaked in 2024 and has held near 2025 levels since. Meanwhile, the share of hours with very low power prices has climbed from 1% to 2% in 2021 to about 10%.

Solar is taking the brunt. Max Plumptre, director of European transactions at Seattle-based PPA marketplace LevelTen Energy, said capture rates – the share of the average market price a solar plant actually earns – have roughly halved in Spain and Germany since 2022.

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