Carbon-Free Chronicles - June: the essential round up of news and reports relating to 24/7 clean energy

What we’re reading

Don’t wait for hourly certificates: get started on matching around-the-clock today

• Hourly certificates issued by registries is the gold-standard. Before these become readily available, companies and utilities are already progressing towards 24/7 CFE goals: EnergyTag 's Alex Piper explains how this works in a recent blog post.
• With support from utilities and software solutions, first movers are using Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) and granular metering data to track and verify their hourly energy use.
• Today, 27 projects across 5 different continents are doing 5+ terrawatt-hours of hourly matching. Check out the case studies here.

New reports recommend incorporating “Loss of Green Hours” and warn against the use of short-run marginal emissions

• In a new report, Charles River Associates evaluate the trade-offs between overbuilding generation capacity and meeting all hours of load with clean energy.
• The Loss of Green Hours (LoGH) metric describes the hours not met by CFE production, and allows utilities to better evaluate the trade-offs between meeting hourly CFE goals and overall construction costs. LoGH can help identify gaps in CFE production and optimize investments to fill those gaps.
• A publication in Energy Policy from Princeton University and National Renewable Energy Laboratory warns that the use of short-run emissions factors may significantly overestimate emissions impacts of electricity technologies and interventions. Accurate metrics are needed to understand the impacts of electricity consumption and procurement decisions.

Progress on clean energy targets and hourly transparency in the US, UK, New Zealand

• The Vermont Senate followed the House of Representatives in passing a bill to modernize Vermont’s Renewable Energy Standard (Vermont’s equivalent of a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS). The new Standard requires all Vermont utilities to provide 100% renewable energy by 2035, up from 75% by 2032. They plan on doubling new small and medium renewable energy projects. The bill is now awaiting approval from Governor Phil Scott.
• In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority required Budweiser to substantiate their 100% renewable electricity claim. The brewer covers it’s entire electricity consumption volume with REGOs, a system which has been questioned as it allows to claim carbon-free energy sourcing when in reality the timing of renewable generation and consumption aren’t taken into account, creating some gaps in clean sourcing.
• In New Zealand, Simply Energy is leading the way on demonstrating real time emissions. They launched Carbon iQ, a tool that provides detailed emissions reporting by combining real-time emissions data with half-hourly electricity consumption data. This has the approval of Toitū Envirocare, New Zealand’s leading carbon certification organisation.

What we’re writing (and saying)

Building companies and innovating in clean energy markets

• From a climate change class in university to building companies in the energy sector, our co-founder and CEO Toby Ferenczi shares his expertise on entrepreneurship and clean energy markets on the CleanTechies Podcast.
• With hosts Somil Aggarwal and Silas Mähner 🔍🌎, they discuss the electricity sector and the evolution of clean energy trading as certificates progress towards hourly timestamps and matching. While electricity buyers have historically led the push for hourly clean energy matching, utilities around the world are picking up the pace on adoption, both voluntarily and in response to regulation.
• Toby also talks about the challenges of building a company in the energy industry, where regulation is strict and decisions are slow due to the critical nature of the service.

Get to know Customer Success at Granular Energy

• Our Customer Success Lead, Maliha Bhola, describes her experience working at Granular Energy and what it takes to lead our Customer Success team.
• Developing strong customer relationships is key to our business, and Maliha knows how it’s done. She highlights the importance of observation, organization, and communication in building and managing internal and external coordination with customers.