Contributed by Steve Hoy, Enosi
Consensus is rapidly growing that currently popular approaches for reducing carbon footprint across industry and consumers are ineffective. In light of this, now is the time to drive towards 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) as a transformation path to renewable energy consumption that will get us to a true zero outcome.
Emerging energy traceability technology means that every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumption can be traced back to carbon-free electricity sources, at every hour of every day. It is the end goal that, once achieved, truly means a decarbonized electricity system. This approach offers other benefits, too. Energy traceability is a less expensive approach to decarbonization transformation, as one utility in the US found following a trial.
Energy traceability is also being championed by several big energy-intensive tech companies, including Google, Iron Mountain, and others. And in turn Google has partnered with the United Nations Sustainability for All initiative and the C40 network of cities to undertake 24/7 CFE programs.
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Critically for Australia, it’s also a way to help companies avoid “greenwashing” their energy consumption, which is rapidly becoming a problem that undermines our collective effort to reduce carbon outputs. Not surprisingly, tech firm climate leader Atlassian has recently said using offsets to hit targets will increasingly “be facing an enormous amount of blowback.” They are advocating that the vast majority of energy use comes from renewable energy sources and only a small amount, if at all, be offset.
This matters because currently organizations are more-or-less free to purchase carbon credits and offsets, allowing them to claim a “Net Zero” approach to meet their carbon reduction targets. With carbon credits, if a high-polluting business uses more than its cap, it can either purchase some form of credit from a lower-polluting enterprise, or invest in carbon offsets, such as reforestation. Australia’s new Safeguard Mechanism, debated and passed in just recent weeks, includes these kinds of provisions for our largest polluters.
However, environmental groups like Greenpeace dispute the value of these systems, and for good reason. In many cases, the trade of carbon credits has become a new revenue stream and commercial opportunity. The intended outcome, meanwhile, is being missed because the overall amount of carbon in the air is not being reduced in a reliable manner.
Another popular solution is Renewable Energy Certificates – RECs. Unlike carbon credits, RECs do represent the production of renewable energy. The challenge is that they usually represent renewable energy that other organizations used. The issue with this is that if company A takes the credit for energy used by some other company B in order to claim they were Net Zero, company B, by default, cannot itself achieve Net Zero. And so the carbon output gets shuffled around on paper as part of the company accounting, but the underlying goal of reducing carbon emissions is not nearly as successful as we need it to be.
This is why sustainability and climate advocates now present 24/7 CFE as the only meaningful approach to a truly decarbonized climate.
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Achieving 24/7 CFE is possible, and it can be targeted now. It requires action across the entire energy supply chain, from policy to procurement, through to consumption, and a joining of energy buyers and suppliers, governments, system operators, investors, and consumers. Transformation is never easy, but 24/7 is readily achievable with the resources that we have access to now to 99%. The last 1% is dependent on geography and cost, and as technology continues its exponential improvement of the next decade is achievable in most global jurisdictions.
The linchpin in ensuring the success of any drive towards 24/7 CFE is traceability. Demonstrating that energy consumption is clean relies on having an accurate and transparent way of measuring both the inflow and outflow of energy from standard smart meters.
For example, as we have explored in our white paper The Case For The True Zero Standard :“A household in Australia, for example, can buy solar farm energy and match ~40% of their daily consumption. Adding wind farm energy to the household mix matches ~75% carbon-free energy, importantly providing clean energy in the evening when solar panels are not generating. To increase the percentage, that same household can add a portfolio of solar and wind farms, and grid-scale batteries, continuing down the path to True Zero.”
Meanwhile, the transformation to deliver this change in energy sourcing and consumption – and likely will be down the track – will be a penalty for those that cannot demonstrate that their energy has been renewably sourced. This too will rely on highly accurate and granular traceability software to maintain the integrity of the data and real-time tracking of energy sources and flow.
Government at almost all levels can – and should – accelerate the transformation towards True Zero by investing in targeted subsidies. As we saturate our grid with solar panels, the focus needs to move towards resources that ‘fill the gaps.’ This will encourage wider adoption of both firming resources and traceability software to give consumers the opportunity to buy their energy from known renewable sources. In the immediate term, however, it’s important that both government and industry move away from talk of “carbon credits” and “Net Zero,” because, however well-intentioned these were to begin with, such approaches to sustainability if perpetuated will inevitably strand their advocates on the wrong side of history by drastically slowing the carbon-free energy revolution.
Steve Hoy is a global utility industry executive and recognized subject matter expert in smart grid and distributed energy resource management systems. He is now being recognized for his advocacy for a new approach to renewables that he calls True Zero. Learn more at www.enosi.energy
