Clean Energy Accounting Project

ACTIVE INITIATIVES

Market-based Accounting for Clean Fuels

Markets for clean fuels including biomethane, sustainable aviation fuels, and green hydrogen are evolving from ideas to realities. Utilizing the GHG Protocol’s Scope 2 Guidance as a model, this CEAP initiative will define a series of globally applicable market-based quality criteria for clean fuels that are sufficiently rigorous to support credible use claims as well as market-based direct emissions calculation guidance consistent with the principles and existing attributional accounting framework of the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard.

Indicators of Clean Electricity Procurement that Drive Supply

Voluntary buyers of renewable electricity are increasingly focused on enhancing the impact of their procurement. This CEAP initiative will produce consensus guidance for companies and other voluntary buyers of renewable energy in the United States seeking to increase the impact of procurement on clean electricity supply.

PLANNED INITIATIVES

Hourly Utility Product Design

Vertically integrated utilities are well-positioned to offer a range of hourly clean energy products. However, variations in each utility’s portfolio and circumstances can lead to significant differences in these offerings, making it challenging to ensure that the products being provided align with customer expectations and that the tracking and reporting of clean energy use remains credible and consistent. This initiative will develop best practices for designing hourly clean energy products for vertically integrated utilities in regulated markets. These best practices will focus on standardizing product design options, tracking requirements, and reporting mechanisms to ensure credible clean energy accounting and increase access to hourly products.

Best Practices for Power Source and Emissions Disclosure

The approximately 3,000 utilities in the United States face different regulatory requirements and other considerations that influence whether and how they calculate and communicate power source and emissions information to retail customers. This CEAP initiative will produce best practices for power source and emissions disclosure for select scenarios covering different electricity market structures and attribute tracking capabilities.

Secondary Transactions of Hourly Certificates 

Many organizations embracing 24/7 carbon-free energy matching are making large procurements that may not match their own load on an hourly basis. Secondary unbundled hourly certificate transactions provide an opportunity to rebalance hourly over and under supply through transactions with other market participants, but limited tools and approaches have been established to facilitate these activities in a credible way. This initiative will identify best practices for the secondary transactions of unbundled hourly RECs to ensure integrity, transparency, and access in voluntary and compliance markets. Existing market infrastructure will be examined and analyzed to determine necessary modification for secondary transactions of hourly RECs. Outputs may include recommendations, requirements and claims guidance for companies, REC marketers, utilities, regulators and tracking systems.

Accounting for Battery-Stored Clean Energy

Battery storage offers crucial advantages to the electric grid by enabling load shifting and enhancing grid flexibility as higher levels of variable clean resources are built into the system. While Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) are the established accounting instrument for electric energy in the U.S., there is a lack of standardized guidance on how EACs and storage interact. Outside of all-generation tracking systems, non-renewable clean resources face even greater challenges. This inconsistency creates a barrier for a growing class of electricity customers looking to align with carbon-accounting standards that recognize clean energy procurement such as data centers, green hydrogen producers and ​24/7 clean power matching organizations. This CEAP initiative will consider real-world practices and market infrastructure to explore outstanding issues in tracking clean energy through battery storage in the US. Objectives will include the development of recommendations for EAC issuance and retirement, allocation of energy attributes from charge to efficiency losses and discharge under varying operating models, and documentation best practices for communicating the attributes of stored energy to key stakeholders.

Data and Market Conditions for SDCE

Standard Delivery Clean Energy (SDCE) refers to amount of clean energy that is delivered to consumers through standard, non-customized energy products, as opposed to green tariffs or specified procurement. In the U.S. it may be available in vertically integrated markets through the default service from the local utility and in restructured markets, via the standard service offer from a customer’s selected utility or default supplier. SDCE is not commonly disclosed to customers and its calculation is dependent on the data sources available to electricity providers and/or state regulators. Certain market conditions, data, tracking infrastructure, and oversight are necessary to produce credible and verifiable SDCE. This initiative will consider different geographic and temporal standard product-types to define core criteria in different market frameworks, as well as showcase best practice examples where SDCE is already being provided. Outcomes will provide a pathway for customers in new markets and service territories to gain full transparency into the environmental benefits associated with the electricity they are consuming.

 

COMPLETED INITIATIVES

Calculating a Residual Mix

Credible residual mix information is important for accurate clean energy and GHG accounting and disclosure. This CEAP initiative will develop consensus guidance for the calculation of annual residual mixes and residual mix emissions factors for use in different voluntary and compliance disclosures.

Guidance for Supplier Clean Electricity Procurement

Existing international guidance on credible clean energy claims and GHG accounting does not fully support the objectives of companies with supply chain clean electricity procurement goals. This CEAP initiative produced guidance for companies setting and verifying the performance of supply chain clean electricity procurement requirements and incentives. A background paper on current Scope 3 GHG emissions accounting practices for supply chain clean electricity procurement was also released.

Accounting for Standard Delivery Renewable Energy

To address the inconsistencies when accounting for renewable energy that is not actively procured, CRS facilitated a series of virtual workshops to identify areas of consensus and quantification best practices.

Recommendations for a Federal Clean Electricity Performance Program

 

RELEVANT CRS RESOURCES

Hourly Renewable Energy Accounting

Accounting for Clean Energy Use

Regulatory Policy

Additional Resources