Major United States corporations form a renewable energy buyers alliance. Facebook, Alphabet (Google’s new name), Walmart, and General Motors, while the environmental groups include the Rocky Mountain Institute, the World Resources Institute and the World Wildlife Fund.

Fed up with what they say are regulatory blockades to purchasing renewable energy, a slew of U.S. companies and institutions are taking matters into their own hands … The Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance aims to develop 60 GW of renewables by 2025, or about 6 GW of renewable energy per year until then. Bloomberg notes that is enough capacity to replace all the coal-fired power plants in the U.S. that are expected to retire within the next four years. Many companies in the alliance have already taken major steps by signing power purchase agreements for greener energy, but they say that isn’t enough.

Facebook aims to source 50% of its energy from renewables by 2018, said Bill Weihl, Facebook’s director of sustainability.

The Alliance, calling itself REBA is developing a Web site having more details.

This story was also covered by GreenBiz.com, the Financial Times, Industry Week, and Bloomberg.

It’s interesting that, for a supposedly business-savvy state, Massachusetts does not see the obvious opportunity here. The only thing better than investing directly, by state mandate, in zero Carbon energy is doing that, and getting private industry to pay for much of it.