New initiative helps consumers verify energy sources hourly

An initiative has been launched to deliver hourly certificates to verify exactly where consumers’ energy comes from, helping them to understand their carbon emissions in real time.

EnergyTag brings together more than 60 companies including Ovo Energy, Microsoft and Google. Its council and advisory board are working together to define a set of guidelines that will form the basis of a market for energy certificates with a timestamp of one hour or less.

In parallel, the initiative will stimulate the first voluntary markets for the certificates by coordinating a series of demonstrator projects around the world showcasing real-time energy tracking technologies.

Under current schemes such as the renewable energy guarantees origin (REGO) in the UK, there is not much correlation between generation and consumption. For example a unit of electricity could have been produced in the summer but claimed in the winter.

The EnergyTag initiative is designed to allow companies to show they have bought certificates that match their supply at the right time, when the right amount of renewables are on the grid, showing they have matched supply each hour with renewable energy.

EnergyTag was founded by Ovo Energy’s director of international Toby Ferenczi. He says a lack of consensus around energy procurement is causing confusion and mistrust and believes it is important to develop energy procurement methods that “incentivise the maximum amount of carbon emission reductions”.

Ferenczi believes that creating a system of hourly certificates provides multiple benefits including helping to build consumer trust by verifying the source of electricity and their hourly carbon emissions, which can be used in carbon markets.

He also believes it will support the development of new markets for energy flexibility.

He said: “It’s a cruel irony that the more successful we are at deploying renewable energy the harder it gets to integrate that energy into the grid. Adopting hour-by-hour energy certificates builds consumer trust by linking production directly to consumption, supports the growth of energy storage, and enables accurate carbon accounting.

“Our goal is to establish a common, tradable instrument that provides traceability across markets for power, flexibility and carbon. Speeding up the switch to renewables is vital if we are going to keep within the 1.5-degree climate goal.”

The EnergyTag standard is a voluntary add-on to existing certificate schemes such as REGO.

Phil Moody, who will chair the EnergyTag council and advisory board, said: “Current renewable energy procurement methods match average supply and demand over a 12-month period, but to reach the level of renewables required to meet new climate targets, there has to be some way to track the time of generation, which is why EnergyTag is the critical next step.”

Google is one example of a corporate clean energy buyer that has set itself an ambitious goal for 24/7 energy tracking.

Michael Terrell, director of operations at Google, said: “Google intends to run on carbon-free energy everywhere, at all times by 2030. EnergyTag will be an important tool for helping Google and many others source carbon-free energy for their operations, at an hourly level. We are excited to be part of the EnergyTag initiative and look forward to supporting the development of this important standard.”