What we’re reading

Implementing and managing 24/7 CFE for energy buyers

• Last September the Climate Group announced the 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition, with the goal of supporting energy buyers in procuring hourly matched carbon-free electricity. Their 3-minute briefing provides a concise explanation of the approach and benefits to end-consumers — including preparing for regulation and ensuring the credibility of energy claims.
• With energy buyers increasingly interested in higher granularity procurement and certificate registries beginning to issue hourly EACs, market participants will require robust certificate management tools. FlexiDAO’s most recent guide details the fundamentals of current EACs and Granular Certificates, and the challenges and opportunities energy buyers should expect from the transition.

New scoring criteria aims to improve customer understanding of energy supply

• Many suppliers market themselves as “100% renewable”, but are still, to some extent, reliant on fossil-fuels. This is made possible through the purchasing of unbundled EACs (GOs, REGOs, RECs). A recent article from Positive.News breaks down these claims and offers a new scoring criteria, “Good Green Supply”.
• This criteria is made up of three scores. (1) True green, the percentage of power sourced directly from renewable generators, (2) New green, the percentage of newly added renewable power, and (3) Time-matched green, the percentage of customer demand that is backed by renewable power on an hourly basis.
• Consumers are increasingly looking for better clarity on their green purchases. Good Green Supply and companies like Matched are working to improve supplier transparency, giving consumers the details needed to make informed decisions on their energy purchases.

UK suppliers deliver traceable products to their customers

• With SmartestEnergy’s Traceable Renewable Supply, customers get a clearer picture of their energy purchases with REGOs allocated at a half-hourly level. For JLL, this means they can lead in complying with the UK Green Building Council’s newest guidelines, calling for members to report on the time-matching of their renewable energy purchases. With an established hourly baseline, JLL can now better inform their demand and procurement strategies to increase their CFE score over time.
• Brook Green Supply is the latest UK retailer to launch a traceable green supply product. Through our collaboration, we address the growing need for verifiable transparency in energy procurement, enabling businesses to confidently demonstrate their sustainability credentials. Brook Green Supply customers can now gain unprecedented visibility into their REGOs. This partnership empowers organisations to take on a robust and trustworthy approach to renewable energy sourcing.

What we're writing (and saying)

Simplifying complex energy certificate systems

• EAC management today is still mostly run on spreadsheets. With increasing customer demand for EACs and associated reporting, traceability, and granularity needs, this process is becoming a bigger burden on teams. We’ve worked closely with our customers to build a product that can reduce the heavy lifting on certificate management by providing a software to automate the certificate lifecycle. We’re helping suppliers gain clarity across the portfolio to enable an optimised certificate allocation and automated reporting.
• We’ve also taken a deeper dive into the US market needs and trends. Ariel Smith shares her thoughts: the US market is uniquely complex and fragmented, and in need of operational efficiency improvements. Companies are spending hours manually reconciling data across multiple registries, dealing with inconsistent reporting requirements, and struggling to get a clear, accurate picture of their REC portfolio. This leads to increased administrative costs, potential compliance risks, and ultimately, a lack of confidence in their sustainability claims. We’re aiming to help improve those processes.

Demystifying the meaning of hourly matching

• Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) as they are today do not incentivise the addition of new clean energy in locations and times where they are lacking, and where fossil fuels take over. Adding a time-stamp to EACs, and aiming for hourly matching can create that incentive. So how do we calculated hourly matching, mathematically? It’s not the percentage of hours that are covered by CFE, nor the percentage of each hour covered. Rather, it’s the ratio between the demand volume and the supply that matches with the demand. Dive into the details in this article.
• As hourly matching is gaining traction, there’s an effort in the industry to align on standards to ensure the same methodology and criteria are applied globally. The EnergyTag standard outlines various configurations, TUV and Climate Group also have guidelines. In this article, we highlight the key differences and why at Granular Energy our preferred methodology is EnergyTag configuration 1.

Join us at upcoming events!

• Market Readiness for 24/7 Renewable Energy in Hungary - online webinar, May 14th, 12:00pm CEST
• BDEW Kongress — Berlin, June 4th-5th with Pal Habsburg-Lothringen
• ETCSEE Vienna — Vienna, June 11th-12th with Pal Habsburg-Lothringen