Redefining Energy hosts Gerard Reid and Laurent Segalen welcomed our CEO, Juan Pablo Cerda, for a conversation about the evolution of energy certificates, the rise of 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy, and how Renewabl is helping companies track and transact hourly-matched PPAs and GOs.
Read the transcript below or head to Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Why annual renewable energy claims are broken
Gerard Reid (co-host):
Today on Redefining Energy, we’re going to talk about monetising and trading green electrons.
Laurent Segalen (co-host):
The funny story is the relationship between companies and reporting. First, they resisted. A hundred years ago, with financial reporting they’d say, “Why report? Our numbers are always perfect.”
Thirty years ago, when regulators asked for environmental data, they said, “No problem — the environment. We’re all good.”
Twenty-five years ago, when it was carbon emissions reporting, they said, “We don’t need accountants. Our engineers know the calculations.”
And each time, regulators stepped in and forward-thinking companies launched voluntary protocols that became law. We’ve seen it again and again — and we’ll see it with green electrons.
Gerard:
What I find fascinating is the role of tech companies. They’re at the forefront, saying, “We need to change reporting,” and trailblazing new methods. You might ask why they don’t hide, but they do the opposite.
Laurent:
What’s interesting is those early adopters set protocols — like the Greenhouse Gas Protocol 25 years ago. They were voluntary, then EU and California made them mandatory. With 24/7 green electrons — hourly tracking — regulators see it works and will require it.
Gerard:
I think it’s crucial. If we want more renewables, we need hourly tracking, maybe 15- or 5-minute. It signals where to build firm renewables. No choice — we have to do it.
Laurent:
Not just good reporting. Legal frameworks will demand 24/7 green power for green hydrogen. No 24/7 report means carbon border adjustments, lost subsidies, taxes. Big money.
Gerard:
Time to bring on our guest.
JP (Co-Founder and CEO at Renewabl):
I’m really happy to be here, thanks.
Laurent:
Twenty-five years ago, the first carbon markets arrived. And of course, there were about anything that emits carbon. They covered power, steel, chemicals, cement. Voluntary and compliance markets, mostly in Europe. Later, I think the renewable industry wanted more granular data. Explain how we moved from carbon to environmental attributes of electricity.
JP:
The carbon market, as you mentioned, is interesting. Market is changing very, very quickly.
One thing that is important to note about the carbon market is the verification process and how carbon offsets are used to assess the projects and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, afforestation, methane capture is verified once every 10 years.
Certificates can be verified on an hourly basis. There’s an interesting regulation coming into force in the EU that bans claims that a product has neutral or reduced or positive impact on the environment if they're solely justified through the purchase of carbon offsets.
From 2026, the EU will prohibit environmental claims based solely on carbon offsets, unless they’re supported by more robust evidence.
– JP Cerda, Co-Founder and CEO at Renewabl
Read more: Renewable EACs vs. carbon offsets: a comparison of environmental impact
Laurent:
If we roll back 10 years, US regulations paralleled EU ones. We started having companies, especially big tech, who made big commitments such as joining RE100 carbon disclosure project.
So that really was the origin of that movement of being much more granular in tracking emissions. And of course, because that was voluntary, they needed a quasi-public system to trace green electrons.
About criticism of renewable energy certificates
JP:
Just to give a little bit of context on what renewable energy certificates are, it is a document that is issued to guarantee the origin of electricity generated from renewable energy sources. They have different names in different countries, GOs across Europe, REGOs in the UK, and RECs in the United States. Whatever the name, the concept is the same — issuing bodies certify the origin of every megawatt-hour (MWh) of production and verify that it belongs to a specific asset — hydro, wind, solar.
Laurent:
Let’s be very technical. I have a wind farm. It starts producing power. How do I get my REGO issued? Do I send a fax? An Excel sheet? A PDF? Is it automated?
JP:
For example, here in the UK, Ofgem is a verifying body that issues a certificate. Across Europe, you have different issuing bodies per country, but they are all regulated by the AIB. The task of AIB is essentially to set rules around process of verification, how you can swap inflicts between the AIB countries, and so on.
For context, sellers are typically renewable energy generators who produce that electricity, and they have to apply for these certificates. Buyers are either energy suppliers or businesses who procure renewable energy electricity, and they seek to offset their carbon footprint with renewable energy certificates.
Gerard:
If I look at the market from outside, there's a lot of criticism of companies are saying they're 100% renewable. Could you maybe talk a little bit about that controversy to give us as customers more confidence that greenwashing has not taken place.
JP:
Quite a few companies, buy all their certificates at the end of the year — 100% renewable energy on an annual basis. When you actually look deeper into various factors, like, for example, what hours of the day you're using the energy and where that energy actually comes from, then you realise that that claim of being 100% renewable is not completely true.
Annual matching doesn’t reflect the actual timing or source of electricity.
– JP Cerda, Co-Founder and CEO at Renewabl
Laurent:
So at the end of the year, they would calculate all their kilowatt-hours, correct? And their brokers could say, okay, there's a lot of hydro in Norway in April and a lot of sun in August in Spain. So the buyer would procure a batch of green certificates from Norway in April, a batch of green certificates from Spain in August, and that would match everything. In fact, they accumulated some certificates once a year.
Probably it's time to introduce EnergyTag, a movement we've been part of since the beginning. It says, the annual matching doesn't make any sense, we need to go to hourly matching.
JP:
Absolutely correct.
The need for smarter data and technology
JP:
In order to understand the current net position, the first and the most important step is to measure the Carbon-Free Energy (CFE).
At Renewabl, we plug into the smart meter and allow companies to visualise their energy consumption on an hourly basis. Basically, you will be able to understand more about how the production of a wind farm or a solar farm corresponds to your consumption profile on an hourly basis. And there's always going to be excess energy or excess certificates outside the consumption hours, which is exactly what we're trying to facilitate and make better.
There's always going to be excess energy outside the consumption hours, which is exactly what we're trying to facilitate and make better.
– JP Cerda, Co-Founder and CEO at Renewabl
Laurent:
So this gives rise to a kind of secondary market. You'll get some hours when you have too much certificates and others where you have a deficit. And it's not just about disclosing this in your ESG report, it's about regulation — especially with things like green hydrogen subsidies.
JP:
Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And the strong focus around 24/7 should be really around transparency and bringing more technology to the mix. It's also about where that asset is located.
Laurent:
That requires a staggering amount of data. If you're trading on an annual basis, it takes a call to a broker and making two transactions, and you're done. But hourly readings mean processing 8,760 data points per year.
JP:
We do manage significant amount of data from both the generation and consumption sides. We back every single transaction that we do using an independent ledger, so that we trace every certificate back to a specific asset. In terms of trading, the rule is that you can buy and sell certificates as many times as you want until someone retires it.
Gerard:
Let's say I want to hedge, what I use is some form of derivative product. In the case of power, I can win the market as it is now, and I can buy a yearly product or buy a quarterly product. Do you see this evolving into something like derivatives markets — hourly certificates traded like financial products?
JP:
We are trying to avoid adding more complexity to the system. Our focus right now is definitely transparency, but we also believe that every hour is going to have a specific price. For example, with the Renewable Energy Directive III pushing hourly matching, we will start seeing more peak and off-peak pricing.
Laurent:
What you're saying here is that through marketplaces like Renewabl, green attributes to electrons will finally be priced based on time and scarcity. Solar at noon in Italy in July might be cheap, but finding some hydro certificates during peak hours in the evening, that's going to be much more valuable.
Green attributes to electrons will finally be priced based on time and scarcity.
– Laurent Segalen, Redefining Energy
And of course, the interesting thing is that that green attribute is not valued yet by the market, because the price of the certificate at noon and at 7pm is the same. But now the system is moving towards giving a premium to the hours where there is less production and probably even more demand for the green attributes. Am I correct thinking that?
JP:
Yes, you're absolutely correct, and this is going to be enabled by the RED III, which basically states that a guarantee of origin is going to be to the standard size — one megawatt — but it can now be divided in fractions, multiples of one watt hour.
This will basically evolve the granularity of the certificates market and create some opportunities. There was a recent study from Aurora that stipulates that these changes are going to increase the revenue for asset owners by 33%, because if we add battery storage to the mix, then it can help make wind and solar acids much more reactive and flexible.
A recent Aurora study even found that hourly pricing could increase revenues for asset owners by 33%.
– JP Cerda, Co-Founder and CEO at Renewabl
It’s also great for battery storage. There is always an arbitrage between when the battery storage is charged and when the energy is deployed. A different pricing system per hour will allow battery storage operators to charge when the price is low and discharge when the price is peak.
Essentially, the AIB has now have implemented a way that you can double stamp if you use batteries. So you stamp once when the battery is charged and you stamp again when the battery is deployed, so you can basically match that energy that was charged.
Gerard:
As this market changes, what's likely to happen is that the value of hydro and biomass is going to go through the roof.
JP:
Definitely agree, because of the constant production of power and the concentration of certificates which can cover demand during non-solar hours.
Laurent:
And this applies to interconnectors, too. Let's you export Norwegian hydro to the UK. There must be a system where we know that it's Norwegian hydro on one side of the cable — and on the other side in the UK, they should be able to recreate the green attributes that the Norwegian have exported.
JP:
And that's the beauty of hourly matching, because you can actually verify the certificates that correspond exactly when you charge on one side and then deploy on the other.
Gerard:
Is it going to be a virtual matching or a physical matching? In other words, let's assume there's not enough transmission capacity from Norway to Europe, but they've got lots of renewables, so what you're doing is a virtual matching on a time basis — or is it going to be a real production matching, because there are constraints in the grid?
JP:
I think it's going to have to start being a contract for difference initially, and then move on to physical trading activity. Back to Laurent's point about the grid interconnectors, they become really valuable because they enable you to move from virtual to real time delivery.
The Renewabl approach: from data to transaction
Laurent:
JP, based on all these opportunities and your knowledge of green electrons market, you have started this very promising company called Renewabl, without the "e" at the end. You trace green electrons, and I guess other people are doing it. But you also help transacting them. Can you explain how it works?
It's about the traders, they end up with a lot of green electrons from PPAs, and then they have too much — or they don't have enough. They want to rebalance their portfolio. Maybe they have too much in one country, not enough in another. So explain how your platform is helping that process.
JP:
The platform is very valuable for two different segments. One is a corporate sector, and the other one is, as you mentioned, the traders.
On our platform, we do three things. The first one is verification — as a corporate, we let you know what your current CFE score is. We plug into the smart meter, and we analyse how exactly you consume your energy, the level of greenness of the grid around you, and the contracts you have in place.
We analyse how exactly you consume your energy, the level of greenness of the grid around you, and the contracts you have in place.
– JP Cerda, Co-Founder and CEO at Renewabl
The second thing is we highlight the gaps. For example, if you signed a PPA — which is typically either pay-as-produce or base load, usually for around 30, 40% of their annual volume. What happens with the remaining 60, 70%? We help those companies buy hourly matched certificates and trace those certificates back to specific assets.
[Editor’s note: Since this episode was recorded, Renewabl has also launched hourly-matched PPA trading — enabling buyers to secure traceable Power Purchase Agreements with hourly alignment to their consumption profiles.]
Our marketplace is also really valuable for companies that cannot sign PPAs because they don't have the necessary volume, or they don't have really good credit rating, or they cannot commit to a 10-15 year contract. These companies need valuable solutions beyond PPAs, and now they can buy hourly matched certificates that correspond to their consumption profile, and understand exactly which wind farm or solar farm the certificates came from.
And the third element is the compliance side. We provide verified compliance reports that meet the standards of CDP, RE100, SBTi, and others.
We highlight gaps in clean energy coverage and offer solutions to fill them.
– JP Cerda, Co-Founder and CEO at Renewabl
Laurent:
Regulation is coming, so those reports will not be a nice-to-have. They're going to be a must have.
JP:
Correct! We help companies prepare for when the regulation that comes into play so they have to become compliant to standards.
We still allow companies to buy certificates on an annual basis, just as they normally do. And then we reconcile those certificates on a month-minus-one basis and allocate those certificates to that specific consumption profile on an hourly basis. They will see if they need to go back to the marketplace and buy more certificates, or if they can swap or sell certificates back to the market.
Laurent:
JP, there's probably still more questions than answers, but what and your team do is definitely one of the critical tools to crack the code of tracking and trading green electrons. Thank you very much for coming on the show.
JP:
Thank you very much for having me.
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