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YOUR RENEWABLE ENERGY OPTIONS
What is a Renewable Energy Certificate?
In addition to the actual electrons produced by power plant generators, there are environmental attributes associated with each unit of energy produced whether it is from a coal burning facility or a wind turbine. For every MWh of energy generated in New England, there is a matching certificate which describes the characteristics of the generating source. These characteristics include the generation type (i.e. wind, coal burning etc.), emissions data, date the facility began operating, etc.
Certificates produced from renewable generating sources are desirable because they have much lower environmental impacts than fossil fuel and nuclear power sources and they result in benefits such as avoided emissions. Because there is a demand for the benefits of renewable energy production, a market has developed for trading these certificates. Certificates can be sold together or separate from the energy commodity itself.
To monitor these transactions, an accounting system has been developed for the New England power grid called the Generation Information System or GIS. This system tracks every MWh of energy and certificates produced and monitors the transaction of these items to ensure no "double counting" of certificates occurs.
