Eurelectric: A Timely Match: 24/7 renewable electricity for corporates

“A Timely Match” explores how to enable greater adoption of round the clock matching of corporate electricity demand and renewable electricity supply in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Renewable electricity is core to corporate decarbonisation strategies. Over 300 companies have set targets to buy 100% of their electricity from renewable sources and their number is set to increase. Some companies are already on their way to meeting or have already met their total electricity consumption with renewables on an average annual basis.

In addition to extending actions to their supply chain and customers, some companies are now revising their ambitions upward, aiming to maximise their impact on grid decarbonisation by matching their demand with clean electricity supply where and when it is needed.

Several companies are seeking to match their demand with clean electricity production on at least an hourly basis, 24/7. The potential benefits of moving towards 24/7 matching include:

Increasing transparency of corporate sustainability claims
Increasing renewable energy investment
Accelerating electricity decarbonisation
Facilitating new business models and innovative technologies
Enabling greater adoption of 24/7 matching calls for rethinking the interdependencies between certificate schemes and electricity markets, products, and grid planning. To fully exploit this opportunity, three main building blocks are investigated in “A Timely Match”:

Flexibility: Optimising flexibility within each segment of the market,
Data Access: Accelerating grid digitalisation and metering data access,
Guarantees of Origin: Harmonising the GO scheme across the Internal Energy Market, updating existing rules so that GOs are time-stamped.
Corporate buyers and utilities are taking different approaches to more granular energy matching. Numerous case studies can be found in the white paper. All solutions should be voluntary, be compatible with, and not undermine existing schemes, e.g., GOs.