Through the use of Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs), end-users around the world can make reliable
claims about their energy usage such as: “my factory runs on 100% renewable energy”, “our products are made with 100% wind energy” and “our global electricity usage causes zero end-of-pipe emissions”.
Without the use of EACs, it would be impossible to make these reliable claims because electricity is not a tangible product that can be boxed and sent from the producer to the consumer. Instead, a producer injects an electrical charge into the grid in one place and somewhere else, a consumer takes the same amount of charge off the grid. There is no way to track electrons through a grid. Therefore, the only reliable mechanism for making claims about the use of a specific charge that was taken off the grid is a system that books all injected charges as unique units (megawatt-hours (MWh)). These booked, unique units can be traded independently from the underlying electricity and only the person or entity that ‘cancels’ (see below) this unique unit can claim the usage of that specific MWh. This mechanism is called a
book-and-claim system and is the cornerstone of EACs worldwide. It is an accounting instrument that certifies the production of a MWh of electricity along with factual characteristics of how, where and when the electricity was produced. These units can then be transparently traded and cancelled.
