Google says it has made a major breakthrough on carbon-free energy

Google has been working to develop better tools to track energy consumption and production in order to achieve its 24/7 carbon-free energy goal by 2030.

As part of these efforts, the search giant announced a new tool called Time-based Energy Attribute Certificates (T-EACs) last year to advance a more granular approach to energy tracking. 

Once T-EACs are fully developed and widely deployed, they will not only help Google achieve its 24/7 carbon-free energy goal but will also provide society with valuable new insights concerning the availability of carbon-free energy on electricity grids during every hour of every day. At the same time, this information will help energy consumers better understand their energy use while also creating price signals that stimulate new investments into green technologies and projects that deliver carbon-free energy when it's most needed.

Google has spent the past year engaging partners around the world to advance the development and adoption of T-EACs. The company has also expanded the use of hourly certificates, accelerated the development of tools and systems to unlock energy data and hourly matching and created technical standards to drive the widespread adoption of T-EACs.

Tracking and reporting carbon-free energy

The registries that create, track and manage the energy attribute certifications (EACs) associated with clean energy generation are some of the most important stakeholders in advancing T-EACs according to a new blog post from Google Cloud.

In the past, these registries have not issued or tracked certificates on an hour-by-hour basis but this has changed as demand grows for 24/7 carbon-free energy. For its part, Google has been working with global registries to accelerate this shift while creating new products and services for tracking energy attributes on a more granular basis.

In the US, the company partnered with the non-profit M-RETS which tracks and validates energy attribute certificates in order to expand the hourly transaction capabilities of its platform and enable the tracking and retirement of hourly certificates by all of its users. Google has also worked with APX to support the retirement of hourly Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) within the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and as a result of this work, electricity generators across the Central and Midwest US will soon be able to retire certificates on an hourly basis whenever hourly data is available.

In Europe, Google has collaborated with the Danish Grid operator Energinet as it builds the technical foundation to support granular certification and develop innovative applications such as the Project Energy Origin Platform. Meanwhile, in Latin America, the search giant has launched a pilot led by The International REC Standard Foundation in close collaboration with Evident Services and its suppliers ACCIONA Energia and AES Andes.

Going forward, Google plans to continue to advance the adoption of hourly certificates as it works to ensure it is able to meet its goal of running its global operations on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030.

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