One month into Q3 this year, data from S&P Global revealed exciting news: corporate clean energy purchasing in the United States had surpassed a cumulative 130 gigawatts. According to data from the Clean Energy Buyers Association released about two months ago, this voluntary corporate procurement drove more than 40% of clean energy capacity additions to the U.S. grid over the past decade.
Looking ahead, a joint CEBA-Wood Mackenzie analysis forecasts that U.S. corporate clean energy procurement could more than double over the next decade, reaching a cumulative 275 GW by 2035. And globally, the corporate clean energy story is much the same, but with even bigger numbers, per BloombergNEF.
Collectively, the story is as crystal clear as a Rocky Mountain trout stream: Voluntary corporate clean energy procurement has major momentum and is a powerful, positive driving force for grid decarbonization.
But beware: this story might not have a happy ending. That’s because proposed revisions to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s scope 2 carbon accounting standards — currently open for public comment through an extended deadline of January 31, 2026 — could turn back the clock on this remarkable progress and torpedo the market.
How hourly matching could undermine clean energy procurement
The major revision to GHGP’s popular market-based method that’s been put forward for public comment is often known as “hourly matching.” Its details have been covered extensively in trade media (including Latitude Media), organization blog posts, and professional social media, so we’ll summarize the basics here:
If adopted as the new GHGP scope 2 MBM, organizations would only be allowed to count procured clean energy or certificates toward their scope 2 emissions calculations if they are a) produced in the same hour as their electricity demand and b) located within the same grid region as their load.
These proposed changes risk sinking the voluntary market by negatively impacting corporate clean energy buyers in at least three big ways:
Geographic constraints and logistical complexity would render procurement infeasible for many companies. Because hourly matching requires clean energy to be procured from within the same grid region as a company’s load, organizations with geographically diverse operational footprints face a nightmarish reality. Instead of signing singular, larger power purchase agreements sized to their total corporate load, they’d be forced to pursue myriad smaller options (often too small for PPAs) across each region in which they have operations — even if that region lacks reasonable procurement options. This substantial added complexity is not just a headache; it could be a full nonstarter for many companies.
A survey of corporate clean energy buyers by Green Strategies found that “nearly 80% of respondents lack confidence that they would be able to procure time-matched clean electricity within smaller market boundaries.” A recently published illustrative example by REsurety further demonstrates just how difficult clean energy purchasing would become for many organizations.
High costs would likely stifle procurement. Independent analyses from diverse groups including the GHG Management Institute, TCR, E3, and McKinsey agree that hourly matching is expensive — and especially so at higher hourly matching north of 90%. Further analysis by WattTime earlier this year found that hourly matching’s high costs could be sufficiently painful enough to push many current and would-be corporate clean energy buyers away from the market.
As the Center for Resource Solutions noted last month, hourly matching could thus “constrain markets, raise costs, and slow the pace of decarbonization at a time when we need clean energy deployment to accelerate.”
Clean energy investment would concentrate in the U.S. and EU, to the detriment of the Global South and global emissions reductions. Most of the world’s voluntary clean energy procurement to date has been concentrated in two Global North regions: the U.S. and EU. Yet a WattTime analysis from the beginning of this year found that purchasing clean energy from Global South locations could achieve significantly more avoided emissions. Seizing that opportunity would essentially become disqualified under the proposed hourly matching, and the reason is simple: Big Tech companies dominate corporate clean energy buying.
Meanwhile, their AI-centric (and power-hungry) data centers are predominantly in Global North geographies. Hourly matching’s geographic constraints would require those companies to buy yet more clean energy from Global North grids that have already made good decarbonization progress, whereas procuring globally could avoid 370% more emissions.
Assessing the impact on corporate procurement
To help organizations better understand how the proposed hourly matching revision would affect their reported net carbon emissions, REsurety and WattTime have released a free scope 2 accounting calculator. Organizations are invited to enter their electricity consumption and clean energy purchasing details to see how their reported carbon emissions and potential future procurement costs would be calculated under the proposed revision, as well as under an alternative impact accounting framework.
And if you have strong feelings about the results, don’t forget to submit comments to the GHGP. It’s not too late. It’s important that we do better when it comes to carbon accounting, but we don’t have to turn back the clocks on clean energy procurement. Voluntary corporate buyers need to make their voices heard — and maintain their strong forward momentum — now more than ever.
This is partner content, brought to you by WattTime and REsurety.
Chiel Borenstein is director of external engagement at WattTime. Christine Donohue focuses on energy markets at REsurety.
