Net Zero & Sustainability

If a UK company reports its scope 2 carbon emissions and it uses a Renewable Energy Certificate, that is not a solitary act of purchase. 

When each certificate is bought, its information will, at a future point, be added to an annual disclosure, which auditors, investors and regulators will scrutinise, rendering the figure that they will observe incomplete or misrepresented if the certificate instrument does not match consumption patterns within a given range or scope. 

It is in part for this reason that sustainability teams now widely rely on the expertise of a carbon reduction consultant; certificate purchasing has ceased to become a post-production administrative function.

Common signs that certificate procurement was treated as a purchase, not a disclosure decision:

• Certificates purchased in bulk at year-end with little regard for when they were purchased, or the location they cover
• Lack of written justification for why this specific instrument/registry was selected
• No apparent person in the sustainability team with clear responsibility for explaining why that was the chosen approach to an auditor
• Amounts of certificate purchased that cannot be matched back to meter readings

One Renewable Energy Certificate demonstrates that a unit of electricity was produced using renewable resources and transmitted to the grid. In the UK, this takes the form of a REGO (Renewable Energy Guarantee) of Origin which is administered and managed via Ofgem. A certificate doesn't assure that the renewable electricity came to the buyer's site, it serves to support a declaration regarding the origin of the energy used under a documented reporting system. It is this element, so easily misunderstood and a point of difficulty when meeting auditors, that leads many organisations to employ an in-house, UK-based carbon footprint consultant.

An original REGO certificate will generally state the following:

• The producing power and technology type (solar, wind, hydro, biomass)
• The amount of electricity produced in MWh
• The time period over which electricity was produced
• The registration reference to show the certificate is not currently claimed against any other station

Since registrars and marketers have a commercial vested interest as to which products get traded there is increased benefit from being independent. Net zero consultancy Arc Renewables advises sustainability teams on which certificates they should buy, which registry should be used and how best to match demand to supply, and doesn't act as a certificate marketer or take a markup on trade.

A net zero consultancy UK businesses can use without conflict of interest Arc Renewables offers:

• Suggestions that are dictated by what is best for the disclosure, and not by commissions.
• Documents drafted from the perspective of assurance from the inception of their creation.
• A purchasing strategy dictated by the multi-year reporting path, and not simply the current period.

From one-off energy sustainability consultant covering a single reporting cycle to more complex and protracted Net Zero consultancy services for multiple sites, Arc Renewables applies the same independent standards to everything they undertake.