The field of clean energy accounting is evolving rapidly, and this quarter has brought significant momentum for CRS’s Clean Energy Accounting Project (CEAP). Across our work, CEAP continues to advance practical guidance, stakeholder engagement, and market-shaping initiatives that support credible clean energy procurement and accounting.
In this issue, we are pleased to share several important updates: the launch of a new workstream focused on clean fuels accounting, the publication of new guidance accompanied by an upcoming webinar, the introduction of a new initiative launching this month, and multiple opportunities for you and your organization to engage directly in efforts that are helping shape the future of renewable energy markets.
Clean Fuels Series—Join the Council to Shape Clean Fuels Guidance
This spring, we launched the Clean Fuels Series (CFS), an 18-month effort running through Q2 2027 to fill critical gaps in emissions accounting for clean fuels. Our goal is supporting credible procurement, disclosure, and emissions reporting that drives real decarbonization in hard-to-abate sectors.
The clean fuels space is at an inflection point. Demand for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), renewable natural gas, renewable hydrogen, and biomethanol is accelerating, but the accounting standards aren’t keeping pace. With some updates not set to be completed until 2028, developers, sellers, and buyers face years-long gaps in definitive guidance for clean fuels reporting. Without credible, practical frameworks now, investment in nascent clean fuels markets is stalling. Production and infrastructure aren’t scaling quickly enough to match pace of the sectors that depend on these fuels to meet their decarbonization targets.
The Clean Fuels Series addresses this gap. Building on CEAP’s Market-based Accounting for Clean Fuels, the series will develop multiple projects focusing on different areas of the clean fuels accounting space. We are first developing a comprehensive Scope 1 reporting framework, targeted for publication in August 2026, along with attribution methodologies and credible claims guidance across voluntary and compliance markets. Additional deliverables may include technical thought-leadership pieces, webinar series, narrowly scoped guidance, and discrete components of an emissions reporting framework. Every part of the process will be consensus-based, actionable, and built by the people who know this space best.
The series is led by Founding Partners in consultation with CEAP staff and the CFS Council, a body of fuels and accounting experts who draft, review, and promote the published project scopes and deliverables.
- Founding Partner: Unilever
- Council Members: 3Degrees, ACT, Canadian Gas Association, ERGaR, Grissan, National Lab of the Rockies, Smart Freight Centre, STX, World Energy, and World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
This is the time to join. If you are an established leader in the field of clean energy or fuels accounting, have thought leadership experience, and want direct input into guidance that will shape how clean fuels markets develop, we encourage you to join the Council or participate as a Founding Partner.
To discuss collaboration opportunities, contact us.
New Guidance: Hourly Clean Energy Utility Product Designs
Over the past year, CEAP has developed guidance on hourly clean energy utility product design options for vertically integrated utilities in the U.S. Hourly Clean Energy Utility Product Designs: Nine Product Model Examples outlines nine Product Models, ranging from the lowest-risk and complexity to the highest-risk and complexity, giving utilities a structured way to design products tailored to their market context, customer base, resource constraints, risk tolerance, and organizational capacity. It’s designed for vertically integrated utilities, state regulators, retail electricity providers, and large clean energy buyers seeking hourly-matched products. Each model includes distinct:
- Generation and load data requirements
- Matching method
- Appropriate customer base and term lengths
- Disclosure and marketing language
Toward Transparent Power: Best Practices for Power Source and Emissions Disclosure
In March, we published Best Practices for Power Source & Emissions Disclosure, a practical U.S. framework for accurate, transparent, and comparable electricity disclosures. Designed for regulators, utilities, electricity suppliers, and voluntary market participants, this guidance outlines how electricity products and environmental attributes should be disclosed to customers.
This guidance provides clear, actionable best practices to strengthen consumer trust, reduce confusion, and support more credible clean energy claims across a range of market structures including retail competitive markets and vertical integrated utility territories.
Key recommendations:
- Disclosures must reflect the generation attributes contractually delivered to retail customers rather than overall utility averages.
- All-generation tracking systems provide the most accurate form of disclosure by ensuring consistent tracking across all generation types.
- Power source disclosure should be backward-looking, based on certificate retirements corresponding to delivered generation.
- Reported greenhouse gas emissions must align directly with the disclosed resource mix.
- Disclosures must account for state renewable portfolio standards, clean energy standards, and load-based greenhouse gas regulations.
- At a minimum, generation and attributes should be matched to load on an annual basis. More granular matching (monthly or hourly) can provide additional insights as supplemental information.
For a condensed introduction and key takeaways, read our article: Toward Transparent Power: Best Practices for Power Source and Emissions Disclosure
Get Involved: Standard Delivery Clean Energy Initiative Launching
We are officially kicking off the Global Data and Market Conditions for Standard Delivery of Clean Energy Reporting (SDCE) initiative this month—and we want you involved!
Standard Delivery Clean Energy (SDCE) refers to clean energy that is delivered to consumers through a standard, non-customized energy product, as opposed to that which is actively procured and delivered, e.g. through green tariffs and other voluntary products. As corporate clean energy targets approach, supply chain reporting requirements expand and new Scope 2 and Scope 3 disclosure rules take hold, understanding exactly how much SDCE a customer receives is becoming an increasingly critical—yet still-answered—question in many markets.
This initiative builds on CEAP’s Standard Delivery Renewable Energy guidance and Calculating a Residual Mix report, and expands that work globally. It will define the market conditions, data infrastructure, and oversight mechanisms needed to produce credible SDCE disclosures across different market frameworks—and showcase best-practice examples where it’s already being done well. Deliverables include a user-friendly report on the data and market conditions required for credible SDCE disclosure, plus a background explainer on existing SDCE disclosures and common practices across markets.
We are currently recruiting working group sponsors and participants. This initiative is directly relevant for corporate buyers with supply chain targets, regulators, utilities, suppliers, GHG accounting professionals, and international tracking system operators. If this describes your organization, your perspective belongs on this working group.
To get involved, contact us.
Watch: Beyond the Grid Mix Webinar
As part of the Power Source and Emissions Disclosure initiative, we hosted a webinar: Beyond the Grid Mix: Advancing Transparent Electricity Emissions Disclosure on June 10th.
Initiative lead, Lucas Grimes, moderated a panel of experts exploring how states, regulators, utilities, and consumer-facing organizations can advance more accurate and transparent electricity emissions information—and why product-specific data, delivered attributes, and clearer distinctions between electricity offerings matter for policy design, consumer protection, and market transparency.
Panelists:
- Abigail Anothony, Commissioner, Rhode Island PUC
- Ignacio Fernandez, Senior Policy Advisor, The Climate Registry
- Sushmita Jena, Researcher, National Lab of the Rockies
The session explored how different stakeholders can apply the guidance in practice to support better regulatory, market, and consumer outcomes, offering an understanding of emerging best practices for power source disclosure, the differences between grid-average and product-specific emissions, real-world examples of transparent electricity product design, and how to put best practices into action in their own markets.
Active Initiatives
Accounting for Transacted Timestamped Information
As hourly and sub-hourly clean energy transactions become more common, this initiative establishes best practices for accounting for transactions involving time-stamped hourly data, covering quality criteria and credible transaction types to ensure integrity, transparency, and market access. It is particularly relevant for tracking systems, hourly renewable energy market participants, trading platforms, brokers, and policy stakeholders navigating excess or under-procurement of clean energy on an hourly basis. The guidance is set to be published in Q3 2026.
Accounting for Utility-Scale Clean Energy Storage
This initiative will address how to track electricity inputs to storage, account for the mixing of renewable and fossil-generated electricity, properly allocate environmental attributes of discharged power, and prevent double-counting. As utility-scale storage capacity grows and interest in granular load-matching increases, this guidance will matter to grid and storage operators, data centers and other large energy users, 24/7 clean power matching advocates, and regulators. This guidance is set to be published in late Q4 2026.
Join the CEAP Advisory Committee—2027 Initiative Selection is Approaching
CEAP’s Advisory Committee drives our work. Advisory Committee members select initiative topics, set the scope and priorities of each initiative, and can participate in any working group. They gain direct access to CRS staff on policy trends, market development, and regulatory changes, and they collaborate with other stakeholders across the industry. Membership means shaping clean energy accounting best practices and being recognized as a leader for doing so.
This is a particularly important time to join the Advisory Committee as we are now voting on initiative topics for 2027. If you want your organization’s priorities reflected in what CEAP tackles next, contact us.
Current Advisory Committee members:
- 3Degrees
- Apple (Founding Partner)
- AT&T
- Carbon Solutions Group
- CDP
- Clean Energy Buyers Institute
- Constellation
- Low Impact Hydropower Institute
- Meta (Founding Partner)
- STX Group