Most companies buying renewable energy certificates aren’t actually reducing emissions
By Paul Homewood
I would not bother reading the whole article. It’s s statement of the bloomin obvious, making an argument I have been arguing for years:
Big companies are increasingly setting voluntary greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that are derived from the 1.5 C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. As part of these science-based targets or longer-term net-zero targets, companies commit to rapidly reducing the emissions that come from their electricity consumption.
One approach is to purchase renewable energy certificates, which represent solar, wind and other green energies flowing into the electricity grid.
Our new study shows that companies largely rely on renewable energy certificates to report steep electricity emissions reductions and that this is unlikely to actually reduce emissions.
Put simply, whilst companies may buy these certificates, called REGOs, the renewable electricity they are created for would have been generated anyway.
The only possible way REGOs could incentivise more renewable generation is if they were of a much higher value. Unfortunately in themselves they have very little value at all. The only value for companies, and indeed customers signing up for green energy deals, lies in virtue signalling.
And that is not something any business is willing to pay more than a pittance for.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“The Conversation”
Earplugs rammed in, megaphone ready to go.
Just a heads up: Allister Heath has an excoriating piece on NZ in the DT.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/09/the-public-still-isnt-being-told-the-truth-about-net-zero/
And a couple of the comments nearly made me lose the will to live!
Ditto, Mike. I never believed there were so many naive people about – or people with a hankering for totalitarian government.
It is amusing to check the pedigree of some of the commenters, look up Extinction Rebellion activist Nigel Harvey on Linkedin, for example!
I am still amazed by the British form of government, that it can commit the future to anything, that the future can’t overturn.
Though I guess, theoretically, you could repeal CCA and NZ. Heath talks like it is wrapped up and there is nothing you can do about it.
The main reason for this scam is to hide the total amounts of subsidies given to unreliable generation .
It also puts up the price of electricity on the grid .
So everybody is paying a lot more for everything , and the money is a hidden stealth tax to pay for Wind / solar .
Are REGOs not what every energy company uses to justify its claim – outrageous lie? – that it supplies ‘100% reneawable energy’?
Perhaps there should be a REGO system for users of oil boilers!
A Scottish renewables company which developed tidal energy systems has fallen into administration.
Edinburgh-based Sustainable Marine Energy, which was founded in 2012, sought to deliver clean, reliable, and predictable tidal energy, mainly for island and coastal communities.
However, its finances have been impacted by events at its subsidiary in Canada. The subsidiary was placed into an insolvency process due to permitting issues with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), resulting in the suspension of its operations in Canada.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23713350.scottish-tidal-energy-firm-falls-administration/
Another expensive CFD bid that won’t be happening. Tidal stream gets £270/MWh in current money., so no loss to consumers.
These companies learned from the original fake green energy grifter, Al Gore. Gore made millions$ selling/trading so-called Carbon Offset Credits. It was a scam when Al invented it, and it is a scam now. This nonsense, coupled with the pervasive “subsidy harvesting” of utilities illustrates the vast expanse of the grift. People will not wake up to this grift until the light go out, and then it will be too late.
Unfortunately, the cycles of Nature which are probably the real explanation of the regular fluctuations in climate which do occur are too darn leisurely! We will all be dead before being vindicated!
For instance, there is a rather clear 74.4 year fluctuation in the North Atlantic Oscillation Index. 74.4 years is the 4th Harmonic of the fundamental 18.6 nodal cycle of the Moon which causes pycnic standing waves in the world ocean.
The dates of the current cycle in the NAO:
Max. 2004.6
Halfway down 2023.2 (Now!)
Min. 2041.8
Halfway up 2060.4
Max. 2079.0
So the stabilization of ice-cover in the Arctic, which has occurred in the last decade or so, should give way (gradually!) to a regime of increasing ice.
Of course, ‘the Arctic’ will then no longer feature in the narrative. Something else will be pushed. For it looks more and more like a ‘forever war.’
“…4th Harmonic…”
3rd Sub-Harmonic if you call the Fundamental the zer0-th Sub-Harmonic of itself. 4th Sub-Harmonic if you call the Fundamental the 1st Sub-Harmonic of itself.
The main point is that a Fundamental cycle can drive, in some cause-and-effect situations, the affected phenomena in a slower cycle with an integer relationship of the periods.
Yes. And it is surprising how seldom it is pointed out that one of the reasons that our Beloved Leaders supported Miliband’s absurd Climate Change Act back in 2008, was that it opened the door to various types of new stealth taxation.
The pollies knew that increases in Income tax, VAT, taxes on booze, fags etc. were (surprise, surprise), understood and resented by even the thickest and most party-loyal voters.
A tax on Carbon Dioxide? Or even on ‘Carbon’? A colourless, invisible (except to Saint Greta) gas?
That’s what got Jeremy Grantham, the big Hedge Fund manipulator, to set up Bob Ward and his malevolent chums in the Imperial College Grantham Institute.
And the European Commission loved the idea. Money from (literally) thin air!
Taxation that the thickest and most naive thought that only Big Business would have to pay.
What could go wrong? And the sheer joy of posing as Virtue Signalling guys and gals, saving the Planet!
And in the US, Al Gore’s “Chicago Carbon Exchange” scam was set up in collaboration with a certain Ken Lay.
Enough said!
Blood-sucking insects, such as bedbugs and mosquitoes, rely on their infrared vision to feed themselves. They can “see” body heat and use the heat signature of the carbon dioxide (CO2) gas that humans and other animals naturally exhale to locate their prey.
Seems appropriate somehow.
I’ve had this debate with my supplier – they advertise all their tariffs are super green, 100% renewable – I pointed out, as a professional HV Electrical Engineer, that those claims are nonsense, peddled to those who do not understand energy
A basic grasp of the physics of the grid, informs you those little electrons, mostly from gas generation on still nights, are from fossil fuel generation
Their response is even dafter than their 100% renewables claim, in that they buy REGOs and that guarantees the same amount of energy sold to their customers has renewable input somewhere in the grid
Honestly, it’s the emperors new clothes on steroids
At that point, I just rolled my eyes and asked for a credit refund
These schemes are like the purchased indulgences by Catholic sinners.
Of course, the sinners went away and sinned no more.
Correct John – the green cults propensity for deceit, weasel words and downright bilge are astounding – bit like Dale Vince funding JSO when he’s had £110Mn green subsidies over 20 years from the taxpayer
The only people who benefit from the absurd carbon credits are the weasels who deal in them!
They are a protection racket reducing the green blob to the level of mafiosos. At least the mob wear nice suits!
What they do is add pointless costs therefore strain on already over regulated industry and business.
Excellent observation. I would add, what the world needs now is someone to nail a twenty-four point thesis, decrying the blasphemy that is the Climate Grift, to the door of the IPCC.
REGOs are certainly becoming more valuable, with some going autioned as high as £10/MWh. A main driver was the ending of validity of EU Guarantees of Origin that had accounted for 40% of the UK market. Offestting had been consumer moves to standard capped tariffs that don’t guarantee REGOs. Perhaps the market will evolve to charge a proper virtue signalling premium. Perhaps government will require REGO purchase just as they did with ROCs, as a back door way of increasing renewables subsidies.
Some market analysis here
https://renewable.exchange/blog/rego-index-update-august-2023/