The 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition — part of international non-profit Climate Group — has released its first technical criteria for companies claiming to use carbon-free electricity (CFE), including temporally and geographically matched energy attribute certificate (EACs). Biomass-based claims are subject to stringent criteria.
Under the criteria, cancelling EACs to claim CFE consumption is mandatory "in markets where EACs are in common use", unless the electricity is self-generated or delivered via a direct line through a physical power purchase agreement (PPA). Examples include Latin American countries using international renewable energy certificates (I-RECs), European countries using AIB guarantees of origin (GOOs), and Australia, New Zealand and North American countries using RECs, although buyers in those and other areas are not required to choose a specific tracking system.
Claims based on certificates must observe geographic market boundaries and temporal alignment. A market boundary is "an area which is internally well-connected by a synchronous electric grid", with a consistent regulatory framework and where "utilities and suppliers recognise each other's energy attributes". Among the listed examples are European network Entso-e, Australia's national electricity market and grid regions defined by the US federal government.
From a temporal point of view, EACs must be matched to consumption on an hourly basis, but the guidance provides for situations in which such granularity is not available. In this case, buyers must pair certificates with hourly metering data coming from the same generator and verified through an ID, and the generator has to transfer exclusive rights to those claims, in order to avoid double counting.
France has currently the most granular GOO disclosure system in the AIB hub, requiring monthly matching. Other countries such as Denmark have tested the use of hourly-matched certificates.
The legal framework for granular GOOs in the EU is established under the revised renewable energy directive (RED III), which encourages greater time-stamping of certificates and allows for GOOs of less than 1MWh. But there are still discrepancies across the AIB hub, even on the more common annual matching system, with some countries — such as Italy, Ireland and Portugal — allowing cancellations for up to 18 months from energy production and the use of previous-year GOOs for compliance the following year.
Caveats for biomass
The 24/7 CFE Coalition recognises electricity from wind, solar, zero-emissions geothermal, marine, sustainable hydropower and nuclear as carbon-free. Crucially, biomass-fired output is classified as carbon-free only when it comes from waste and residue, and corporate buyers must submit in this case a project-specific lifecycle GHG assessment. If emissions exceed zero, companies can claim biomass-based CFE for only up to 10pc of their global electricity consumption.
RE100 — a coalition also led by Climate Group — published new technical guidance in April, banning biomass co-fired with coal and setting stricter rules on the use of EACs.
