MB emissions - Certificate Allocation

This page defines the use of certificates across an organization. For more information on how these certificates are allocated across the organization you can click here.

There are 4 main categories of renewables covered in this report.

1. On-Site Renewables: electricity generated and consumed on-site from renewable sources is categorized here. This generated electricity must not generate certificates to be included in this category. If there are associated certificates that are retained and retired, this should be captured under one of the Location, Group or Region data types.

2. Compliance and Jurisdiction (formerly: National Renewable Energy Quota): some countries or states have renewable energy targets that are backed by mandatory certificates that must be purchased by electricity retailers. If your organization operates in one of these regions (Australia, for example) a certain percentage of your organization's electricity consumption is covered by this quota. This value is calculated taking the total consumption for the region multiplied by the renewable energy percentage in that region. Currently the only region where this applies is Australia. If you would prefer to exclude this category of certificates from your market-based emissions inventory, you can change the setting by navigating to Admin | Configuration | Reporting and Dashboard Preferences | Market-based Emissions PowerReport and select 'No' for the question on Compliance and Jurisdiction.

3. Green Power: this refers to any electricity purchased from a retailer where the retailer manages and retires the underlying certificates, also known as 'bundled certificates'. In this case the certificates are tied to consumption at the account level. Also note that green power must be captured in the same account as regular grid electricity. Read this article for more information on how RECs are captured and handled in Envizi.

4. Location, Group and Region Certificates: this category of certificates refers to any type of certificate that represents renewable energy generation that is purchased separately from the electricity purchase, also known as 'unbundled certificates'. If your organization has purchased RECs, GOs, LGCs, etc, you can allocate these certificates to an individual location, across your grouping structure or across a state, country or at the global business regions of AMER, EMEA and APAC.

   • Location Certificates: this category allows the capture of certificates at a location level. These certificates will be proportionally allocated to the remaining kWh after bundled certificates have been applied to consumption.

   • Group Certificates: this category allows the capture of certificates at any level in the organization grouping structure. As with Location Certificates, certificates are proportionally allocated to remaining kWh after Location Certificates have been applied. By default the classification grouping structure is used, but another grouping structure can be used if that is preferred. Contact Envizi help desk to request this change. To view the breakdown of group certificates, click on the 'Detailed View' switch above.

   • Region Certificates: this category allows the capture of certificates at any level in the geographical region hierarchy structure of your oganization. As with Location and Group Certificates, certificates are proportionally allocated to remaining kWh after Location and the 3 level Group Certificates have been applied. Allocation of these unbundled certificates are distributed proportionally across each account contained in the region defined by the data type (location, state, country or organization). At each level of allocation a subtotal of remaining kWh is calculated before the higher-level region allocation is performed. In this way certificates are not allocated to sites that have already reduced their remaining kWh down to zero and achieved net zero electricity. To view the breakdown of region certificates, click on the 'Detailed View' switch above.

Greater detail on allocation of certificates within the group and region structure can be seen by clicking on the ‘Detailed View’ switch above.

Finally once all certificates are allocated the 'Remaining kWh' are calculated. Market-based emissions are calculated on this final figure and can be seen on the cover page or the Emissions Inventory page.