The Voluntary Market Is Working. Let’s Make It Better
Proposed Scope 2 rules must accelerate the global clean energy transition, protect grid reliability, and ensure climate impact.
Modernizing Scope 2
is necessary, but rigid mandates miss the mark.
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is rewriting the rules of the voluntary clean energy market.
The mandated hourly matching proposal offers ambiguous benefits and risks very real unintended negative consequences.
Research points to more impactful paths
The Science Does Not Support Hourly Matching:
An independent meta-analysis reveals that no rigorous academic research supports the current GHGP hourly matching proposal, and 67% of the same research doesn’t support the hourly matching Market-Based Method as the best approach for decarbonization.
Everyday Energy Costs Will Increase:
Optimizing power for individual corporate buyers rather than the overall grid is highly inefficient. If large corporate customers isolate their loads to achieve strict 24/7 matching, it could drive up electricity prices for everyday residential customers by up to 26%.
There are More Efficient Ways to Decarbonize:
Data shows investing in areas that need it most yields up to 3x greater climate benefit than building in more developed areas, and peer-reviewed modeling suggests that hourly matching can cost 7 to 14 times more per metric ton of CO2 displaced compared to emissions-focused accounting.
Voluntary procurement enables essential impact
Corporate Procurement is Crucial for Getting Projects Built:
Corporate procurement is useful for the matket by introducing risk sharing that brings down the cost of capital via long-term PPAs and other mechanisms. Many businesses with nationwide operations must aggregate their demand across multiple regions to buy clean energy at the scale required to build new projects. Strict 24/7 accounting prohibits this load aggregation, forcing them towards unrealistic and less impactful options instead.
Clean Power Investments Should Consider Grid-Level Impacts:
Strict local boundaries trap capital and hurts grid reliability by confining load and resources in individual islands. Working as a grid instead distributes the risk of outages and requires less excess capacity.
Companies Will Exit the Market:
The proposed new rules will force a market exit. Nearly 80% of U.S. corporate buyers polled said they lack confidence they can source clean electricity under these proposed boundaries, threatening to shrink project financing.
The Science and the Market Are Aligned
THE RESEARCH
Explore the research highlighting how mandatory hourly matching stalls progress, and our interactive database of over 200 papers, articles, blogs, and resources relating to these topics.
THE EXPERTS
Read the 67% of rigorous academic modeling that confirms two-pillar hourly matching is less effective than impact-focused procurement.
THE MARKET
Learn why 80% of U.S. corporate clean energy buyers signal a market exit under strict 24/7 rules, read company case studies like REI and Akamai, and explore what responders to the GHGP Scope 2 survey are saying
24/7 rules will likely impact your business. Learn how.
The fight for a pragmatic Scope 2 standard is ongoing. We are actively gathering support to show the GHGP the real-world consequences of a 24/7 mandate.
If your organization relies on load aggregation or long-term PPAs, we need to hear from you. Contact us to today to learn how your business will be impacted by 24/7 rules.