United States
Australia
Posted on: 21/06/2019
As we undertake our annual electricity product carbon foot-printing exercise with the Carbon Trust, Deputy VP Marketing, Mike Shirley takes a look at why this independently certified renewable electricity product provides customers with a greater degree of transparency and trust.
Having already completed the Q3 2018-19 mid-year audit, we know that we are well on the way to completing the full annual footprint exercise. The Certification process involves the Carbon Trust working with us throughout the year to give our renewable supply customers confidence that they can report zero carbon under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2 Guidance market-based method.
The process is really well embedded into SmartestEnergy and allows us to offer a range of renewable sources – whether that be Natural Renewable, from just wind, solar and hydro, or the more Standard Renewable supply. Both are Certified as 100% renewable. There is also an option to choose from specific sites or sources for those customers that want to get closer to their source of supply.
Using our unique Emissions Factor Model, we allocate one UK-recognised origin certificate to every megawatt hour of electricity supplied to our Certified Renewable customers. This robust process ensures there is no double-counting or under-allocation of certificates. When you are allocating millions of certificates across generation and supply, the independent verification is the only way to be clear that the process has been conducted with the correct rigour.
Once their audit is complete we publish our annual fuel mix and create individual Energy Labels for all our Certified Renewable customers.
As well as making things easy for supply customers, our emphasis on origin certificates also ensures that customers buying renewable power are supporting independent renewable generators. As regulatory change erodes established revenues for these power producers, it’s more important than ever that suppliers like SmartestEnergy are passing the value of these origin certificates through.
Our analysis estimates that almost two thirds of generators receive limited or no payment for their Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO) certificates, meaning that suppliers are failing to support renewable generators by not passing on this value.
Head over to our Certified Renewable page to learn more about the product.
About the author
Mike Shirley joined SmartestEnergy in March 2014 to head up Marketing, Insight and Product Development. His career before then had focused on the technology sector, working for major brands including EE, Orange and Colt Telecom. The expertise gained in the fast-moving telecoms sector is now being used to help SmartestEnergy better understand how to anticipate and meet customer needs to support its unique position in the energy market. Mike has been at the forefront of building SmartestEnergy’s market-leading renewable electricity product offering. Most recently he has led the development of the UK’s first certified 100% renewable electricity supply product, which is certified by the Carbon Trust and enables corporates to report zero carbon emissions in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Scope 2 Guidance.
