The only way to honestly claim your operations are powered by x% renewable energy is if that energy enters your facility’s switchboard.

Most of the time that means that x% is simply your grid’s renewables penetration. It could also include on-site energy that’s directly consumed.

You can be an energy market participant helping renewables get built via virtual PPAs and a physical consumer of dirty energy simultaneously, and this is a good thing to be commended for, but they do not cancel each other out.

The grid is a shared asset. Your grid power is no cleaner than anyone else’s on the same system (technically on the same node I guess) via transactions/accounting.

Simple test: If today we shut off all the fossil plants on the grid, can everyone’s buildings continue to operate at the percentage they claim to be powered by clean energy? If not, how can they claim to be powered by that amount of clean energy? They depend on fossil fuels.

This doesn’t mean VPPA developers, companies signing them, software platforms connecting them, REC brokers, and everyone else involved aren’t doing good things. They are doing very good things! More clean energy is getting built. But let’s just be accurate with our language.