[for the German announcement, please click here]

Granular Energy is pleased to announce the signing of a long-term partnership with LichtBlick, Germany’s biggest supplier offering only renewable electricity. This new partnership allows LichtBlick to expand its offering for business customers to include complete, hourly-accurate transparency regarding the origin and quality of the green electricity they consume.

This makes it possible, for the first time, to create a direct hourly link between electricity generation from clearly defined renewable assets and a company’s actual electricity consumption in Germany, secured by so-called granular certificates of origin. Until now, such verification has only been tested in Germany within pilot projects.

In doing so, LichtBlick is anticipating new rules for greenhouse gas accounting that are currently being discussed intensively within the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2 framework and are likely to apply in the future under the CSRD, the EU’s sustainability reporting obligation. These rules require that, under certain conditions, green electricity may only be accounted for as climate-neutral if generation and consumption take place in the same region and in the same hour.

“Transparency is a key lever for the effective expansion of renewable energy. With Granular Energy, we are bringing an offering to the market that provides business customers with exactly the level of data depth they will need in the future to achieve their sustainability targets and for their carbon accounting,” says Alexander Ilchmann, Head of Inside Sales B2B.

“We are excited to scale hourly transparency in the market together with LichtBlick as one of the first energy suppliers in Germany. Together, we are taking an important step toward deep decarbonization and a more effective energy transition,” says Toby Ferenczi, CEO of Granular Energy.

Increasing importance of quality

For electricity supply in Germany to qualify as renewable electricity, it has been required since 2013 to carry a guarantee of origin (GO/HKN). This certifies for each megawatt-hour of green electricity when and where it was produced. The GO is issued, transferred, and then cancelled in the Environmental Agency’s (Umweltbundesamt) central certificate registry (HKNR).

Traditional guarantees of origin reliably fulfil their purpose as a volume-matching instrument. However, as the share of renewable energy grows, so does the need for a more precise allocation of generation and consumption in terms of both time and quality. Quality attributes such as technology, location, or the age of the plant are already shown on the certificate, but so far they have played only a secondary role. Many of today’s tariffs are based on large portfolios whose origin is not transparent to individual customers.

Hourly certificates and the impact of 24/7

In the current HKN system, the allocation of generation and consumption is typically carried out on an annual basis. In this system, a company can thus use solar power to fuel their nighttime consumption that was produced at a different time. With its expanded offering, LichtBlick is now enabling hourly matching for the first time: business customers receive an hourly, asset-specific proof of the origin of the electricity they consume.

The 24/7 green electricity approach creates additional incentives for storage, flexible loads, and better integration of renewable energy into the electricity system. As a result, granular certificates generated during periods of scarce renewable generation are likely to become more valuable in the future than those issued during times of high feed-in.

LichtBlick’s new offerings in collaboration with Granular Energy

Companies are increasingly linking their green electricity procurement to clear quality criteria such as technology, location, or the age of the renewable asset. LichtBlick offers its B2B customers the possibility to procure GOs with specific criteria. To keep internal processes simple and efficient, the management of certificates is streamlined and automated via the Granular platform.

Additionally, this provides additional credibility for sustainability labels that set specific requirements for the quality of GOs. Targeted demand for such quality attributes also supports investment decisions, eases pressure on grids, and helps create additional renewable capacity.