Who Gets to Claim the Environmental Benefit of a Renewable?

The party who owns the Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) gets to claim the environmental benefit.  

This can lead to some counter-intuitive outcomes from renewables development.

For example, if Portland General Electric (PGE) builds a utility-scale wind farm in its balancing area, it could argue that it uses the electricity it produces to meet its needs.  However, unless PGE keeps and retires the RECs associated with that electricity, PGE cannot claim the environmental benefits of that wind farm.  It could sell the RECs to some other party and use the proceeds of that sale however it choses.

Alternatively, if PGE purchased RECs from any one of a number of entities that have them, then PGE could claim the environmental benefit of those RECs even if it didn’t build the PV solar or utility-scale wind farm. 


image courtesy of renewablechoice.com

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