PPA Performance and Risk Assessment: 7 Critical Executive Visibility Questions

PPAs are long-term commitments. They’re financially material, operationally complex, and they often sit at the intersection of finance, sustainability, and energy teams (each with a different definition of “performance”). 

The hard part isn’t that performance is unknowable. It’s that risk and underperformance often emerge quietly: 

• A project comes online later than assumed, shifting first-year cash flow and internal expectations. 
• Generation deviates from modeled potential, but the “why” is unclear. 
• Basis and congestion behave differently than forecast, and variance gets explained after the fact. 
• Sustainability narratives stay intact until an audit, assurance review, or board question forces precision. 

Visibility gaps rarely appear as clear mistakes. They emerge as subtle oversight pressure: 

• Underperformance is discovered late (after invoices are received, during quarterly reviews, or at the annual look-back). 
• Variance explanations are inconsistent across teams. 
• Leadership confidence drops not because outcomes are bad, but because they’re not explainable. 
• Executive conversations become reactive: “What changed?” becomes “Why didn’t we see this earlier?” 

At an executive level, PPA performance visibility is less about having “more data” and more about having decision-grade oversight: seeing issues early enough to govern outcomes, explain variance credibly, and avoid surprises that surface only after impact. 

About the PPA Performance and Risk Assessment

PPAs are long-lived commitments. They’re financially material, operationally complex, and often governed across finance, sustainability, and energy teams. Performance risk rarely shows up as an obvious error. It shows up as late discovery, unexplained variance, and reactive executive conversations. 

This assessment helps you pressure-test whether PPA performance management is operating with executive-grade visibility or with lagging, fragmented views. 

What This Assessment Helps You Evaluate

• Timeliness of visibility: whether underperformance is visible early enough to govern outcomes, not just report them after close
• Explainability of variance: whether performance drivers can be explained credibly in leadership, audit, or board contexts
• Consistency across teams: whether finance, sustainability, and energy are operating from one narrative and one set of definitions
• Traceability to assumptions: whether outcomes can be connected back to deal expectations (generation, basis, COD timing, curtailment, price shape)
• Ownership and escalation: who owns explaining performance when numbers move, and how early signals reach leadership 

This Assessment Is Designed For

• Executive leadership accountable for PPA outcomes and risk oversight
• Finance leaders accountable for accruals, explainability, and reporting credibility
• Sustainability leaders who rely on performance narratives that must hold up under scrutiny
• Energy and PPA portfolio leaders who provide inputs but don’t own executive confidence 

What this is: A governance diagnostic that surfaces visibility gaps and decision-readiness risk. 

What this is not: Not a how-to guide. Not an implementation checklist. Not a maturity model. Not a product walkthrough. 

Why This Assessment Matters 

When leadership sees PPA performance only through lagging or fragmented views, confidence becomes fragile: 

• Underperformance is discovered after impact 
• Variance explanations arrive late (often during close, audit, or quarter-end) 
• Teams reconcile competing numbers instead of governing outcomes 
• Executive conversations turn reactive: “What changed?” becomes “Why didn’t we see this earlier?” 

Executives don’t need perfect information. They need early, explainable visibility enough to govern outcomes before surprises surface). 

What You’ll Get 

You’ll receive an emailed assessment containing qualitative interpretation guidance based on your answers.

Estimated assessment time: 5 minutes