New research points to bad math behind corporate renewable energy claims - The Verge
Many companies say that they’re slashing more greenhouse gas emissions than they really are, a new study finds. Their renewable energy initiatives have often failed to achieve real-world climate gains.
Even though more companies than ever are proclaiming that they’re powered by renewable energy, those claims are usually exaggerated, new research shows. That disconnect between a company’s claims and reality could jeopardize global efforts to stop climate change.
The problem stems from companies’ reliance on Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to back up their green claims. A company receives a REC by paying to support renewable energy projects around the world. When brands say that they’re powering their business with 100 percent renewable energy, they’re typically still using electricity generated by fossil fuels; they’re just buying up renewable energy certificates to try to cancel out the environmental impact of their energy use.
“Too many consumers, media, even investors might actually think that the company is physically using 100 percent renewables. And that is just not the case,” says Anders Bjørn, a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University and the lead author of a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
While RECs have become a staple in corporate sustainability commitments, evidence is piling up that they’re not as beneficial to the planet as companies might hope they are. Bjørn and his colleagues looked at 115 companies across a broad range of industries — including Microsoft, Ford, and Best Buy — with plans to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions. Combined, the companies reported reducing planet-heating pollution from their electricity by over 30 percent between 2015 and 2019. But that figure is overblown, Bjørn and his colleagues found. In reality, their research shows that companies only cut their emissions by about 10 percent.
That’s a big discrepancy, and the culprit behind that mismatch is the REC. RECs come into play because customers can’t really tell where their energy is coming from when they plug into the grid. It might come from a gas power plant or a wind farm, but it all gets lumped together on the grid. RECs, then, represent a company’s financial support for renewable energy projects.
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