Summary

“Where matters: Integrating deliverability into voluntary clean energy market boundaries” is a white paper released by Singularity Energy with contributions from The Brattle Group and prepared for Google. The white paper introduces a new framework that can be used to help design more credible, impactful, and practical procurement boundaries for voluntary clean energy markets.

Voluntary procurement by corporate buyers has accounted for over 68 gigawatts of clean energy capacity added to the U.S. grid since 2014. These significant voluntary contributions to the clean energy transition have been guided and supported by procurement and carbon accounting standards such as the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, RE100, and CDP. 

However, there is a growing need for these standards to better align voluntary procurement with the physical and market realities of today’s electricity system. The framework presented in this paper is intended to help standards setters increase the credibility and consistency of clean energy claims and Scope 2 carbon accounting.