What about green energy?

The purchase of green energy products can serve as an important step in a business carbon management strategy, but debate continues whether they should universally be regarded as an offset.

As a first step, business should look for green power that has been accredited by GreenPower^TM, an independent Australian authority which screens green power products to ensure that they are generated from relatively new projects (post-1997), meet strict environmental standards, and will not be double counted in any other scheme.

Purchasing green energy can encourage investment in new renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and biomass.  It does not however, result in green energy being physically delivered to the location of the customer.

Instead, purchasing green energy helps to lower the greenhouse gas intensity of the pool of electricity on the grid, and displaces other, potentially more greenhouse-gas intensive sources of electricity that would have otherwise been used to supply the demand for electricity.

Equating green energy purchases with an amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) reduced is not straightforward. A further issue is that some renewable energy projects could have difficulty passing ‘additionality’ tests because of existing regulatory schemes and financial incentives to build them.

Because renewable energy has co-benefits such reducing Australia’s reliance on fossil fuels, many carbon neutral organisations (including EPA Victoria) currently balance their on-site electricity use with an equivalent amount of green energy.  As part of this practice, EPA has prefered local (ie Victorian) suppliers for GHG accounting reasons, as well as to support local industries.

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