New Product Aims To Brings More Transparency To REC Market In Midwest

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
April 1, 2022

Australian software firm Powerledger is introducing a new product to the Midwest Renewable Energy Tracking System (M-RETS) that aims to provide greater transparency and granularity to the renewable energy credit (REC) market.

By using blockchain technology, the new software, TraceX, will allow companies with renewable energy targets to have greater speed and visibility over the RECs that are bought and sold, Powerledger said.

Decisions on which unbundled RECs to purchase are often based on price and vintage (the year the REC was issued), Fiona Tiller, Powerledger’s TraceX product owner, said in a statement.

“Powerledger’s TraceX marketplace provides provenance transparency, so customers can pick and choose exactly what they want and get alignment with their corporate goals,” Tiller said. “For example, customers can buy by project, fuel source, voluntary or compliance eligibilities or at the most basic level, vintage and price.”

Those and other attributes “are becoming increasingly important as companies look behind the REC at the energy they represent,” Tiller said.

In February 2020, Powerledger announced its plans to add the ability to buy and sell RECs to the M-RETS platform that previously had only been a Web-based platform for tracking RECs.

Powerledger says its blockchain-enabled digital platform can match buy and sell orders using TraceX. The platform also provides an immutable and verifiable audit trail for the transfer of REC ownership and allows financial settlement to occur seamlessly within the platform, which connects to users’ business bank accounts and their REC registry account with M-RETS.

M-RETS, the largest REC registry in North America, is used by power generators, utilities, marketers, and qualified reporting entities across the United States.

“M-RETS is excited to be working with Powerledger to pioneer a more data-driven approach to renewable energy certificates,” Ben Gerber, M-RETS CEO, said in a statement.

“Organizations can now make a much deeper impact on the environment, community or grid beyond decarbonization alone,” Tiller said.