By Eleonore Lazat, Commercial Director at Granular Energy.

Price signals & market impact

Do hourly EACs actually drive investment in storage and new renewables, or are power prices already doing that job?

Hourly EACs create a revenue layer that power prices alone cannot provide. Power markets reward dispatchability while EAC markets, when granular, reward temporal alignment with clean generation. That distinction matters for storage in particular: a battery operator could generate hourly EACs for the clean power it dispatches, making the value of shifting clean energy through time visible and bankable. This is a new revenue stream that doesn’t exist under annual matching.

As for additionality, Princeton research results show that 10% of buyers shifting to hourly matching drives a 60% reduction in system-level emissions, because the price signal reaches the hours where the grid is dirtiest and investment is most needed.

Complexity & cost

Hourly matching multiplies data volumes 1,000-fold. Is the infrastructure ready?

This is a real challenge, and one we’ve been working on at Granular Energy for a couple of years now. In most countries in Europe, the data already exists. We look at grid metering data and consumption data which is often available on a half-hourly basis. Our platform already processes hourly metering and generation data at scale across multiple markets, the infrastructure exists.

The key is putting the data burden where it belongs: on the suppliers and registry operators who already manage generation data, not on the buyers. That is precisely our model: we work with energy retailers and utilities to embed hourly matching into the tariffs they already sell, so buyers get hourly-matched certificates without needing to overhaul their own reporting infrastructure.

Buyer burden & accessibility

Will hourly matching exclude smaller buyers, punish companies with wind or solar PPAs, or only ever serve hyperscalers?

Hourly matching does not have to mean hourly procurement decisions for every buyer. The way to make this accessible to the mass market is to put the obligation on the sellers of renewable energy, not the buyers.

We work with energy suppliers, utilities and retailers, traders and brokers, to offer hourly matched tariffs as a product or service. This way any corporate buyer, large or small, can access hourly matching through their existing energy contract without needing specialist knowledge or new systems.

On the PPA question: a company with a wind and solar PPA combined already has significant natural coverage across the day. Gaps can be filled through supplier-offered products. The goal is not perfection from day one but a system that makes progress visible and bankable.

Coexistence & transition path

Can annual and hourly coexist? Should hourly be mandatory or voluntary, and how do we phase it in?

Annual and hourly matching are not mutually exclusive. Moving to hourly reporting today often means keeping existing 100% annual matching coverage, plus adding a layer of hourly transparency, without aiming for it to be 100% hourly.

Granular Energy's view is that the transition works best when it is market-led and policy-enabled: voluntary adoption by ambitious buyers and forward-thinking players creates the liquidity and infrastructure that makes broader adoption viable over time. RED III and the GHG Protocol revision are already pointing in this direction. Mandating a hard switch overnight would be a challenge, but by working with first-movers we are already working through the roadblocks so that hourly becomes the natural default over the next few years.

Tech influence

Is this agenda being driven by Google and Microsoft?

The 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy movement is supported by large tech companies, and it is fair to ask why. With an expected exponential growth in power demand, data centers and tech companies are looking for ways to power their activities while solving the trilemma of energy sercurity, sustainability and price. Just like they spearheaded corporate PPAs a decade ago, they are exploring ways to encourage carbon-free electricity round the clock, covering their consumption with local, renewable sources, allowing them to hedge themselves.

Today, many companies from all industries are joining the movement:

• Unilever, Cathay Life, Schree Cement have joined the Climate Group 24/7 Coalition
• Property players such as JLL, Brookfield Properties
• Small and medium businesses such as Einstein Bros Bagels, Teemill, Soil Association
• Infrastructure and transportion giant Tokyo Metro
• Financial institutions such as JP Morgan Chase

The underlying case for hourly matching does not depend on who first argued for it, it stands on its own merits in terms of emissions accuracy and grid signal quality.

Grid infrastructure

Does hourly matching create an equity barrier for markets that lack the grid infrastructure to participate?

This is one of the more important objections. The current GHG Protocol Scope 2 review draft takes into consideration that some markets lack metering infrastructure, registry capability and grid data quality is low. It allows the use of load profiles rather than realised data.

Storage & batteries

How are battery GOs handled? Does hourly matching actually incentivise storage, or does it just favour existing nuclear and hydro?

The concern about nuclear and hydro is understandable, but it mistakes a short-term dynamic for a structural outcome. Yes, in the early stages of hourly matching, dispatchable clean sources will command a premium in tight hours, as they are the only assets that can currently meet that demand. But that premium is precisely the price signal that makes new storage and clean firm capacity financially viable to build. Hourly matching does not entrench nuclear and hydro, it creates the economic conditions for the next generation of dispatchable clean assets to get financed and built.

On storage specifically: under annual matching, batteries are invisible in the EAC system. A GO is issued to the generator at the point of production, once that happens, the temporal information is lost. A battery that charges on surplus solar and discharges into a high-carbon evening peak cannot claim any certificate for that service under today's system. Hourly matching changes this fundamentally. By making the temporal value of clean power explicit, it creates the basis for storage to be recognised and rewarded for exactly what it does: shifting clean energy to the hours where it is most needed and most valuable. That is a missing piece of the clean energy financing puzzle, and one that annual matching structurally cannot provide.

Additionality & grid impact

Does hourly matching actually make the grid greener, or does it just add complexity without adding clean capacity?

EPRI found that 100% hourly matching drives up to 42 times more emissions reductions than 100% annual matching. Princeton's work by Xu et al. adds another striking finding: if just 10% of buyers shift to hourly matching, the result is a 60% reduction in system-level emissions.

The mechanism is straightforward. Annual matching allows buyers to claim clean energy at times when the grid is actually running on gas or coal, because the certificate carries no information about when the clean power was generated. That removes any incentive to shift demand, invest in storage, or procure clean firm capacity for the hours that need it most. Hourly matching makes those gaps visible and puts a price on them. When the dirty hours have a cost, the market responds through demand flexibility, storage, new clean firm capacity. The complexity argument gets the causality backwards: the complexity of hourly matching is not a burden layered on top of a functioning system, it is the mechanism through which the system actually works.

Market structure concerns

Does hourly matching risk destabilising the existing GO trading market?

The GO trading market has been built around annual instruments, and a shift to hourly does change the nature of the commodity. Traders are right to think carefully about it. But the alternative, defending a market structure that is increasingly losing credibility with buyers and policymakers, carries its own existential risk.

We’ve been working with traders and suppliers to give the existing market players the tools to offer a better product.

Slow adoption despite availability

TÜV Süd has offered hourly matching for nearly 20 years. If it's so good, why hasn't it taken off?

Because the infrastructure, the policy environment, and the buyer demand were not aligned until recently. TÜV Süd's EE+ product is genuinely pioneering, but it existed in a market where annual GOs were cheap, buyer reporting requirements were minimal, and there was no regulatory or reputational pressure to do more. All three of those conditions are now changing simultaneously: the GHG Protocol is under revision, RE100 and the Climate Group are raising the bar, and corporate climate commitments are under real scrutiny. In a survey we ran with Baringa, 42 suppliers worldwide already offer hourly matched tariffs. The market is moving; it just needed the conditions to be right.