Bringing transparency to green power sourcing with Granular Energy

Introducing Granular Energy

Granular Energy, like Drax, aims to enable a world powered by affordable, sustainable and renewable energy.

The company’s founders recognised an opportunity to accelerate the transition to a clean energy system while also providing consumers with stronger sustainability evidence. By improving renewable energy certificate (REC – or Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin – REGO – in the UK) management, it’s been able to enhance transparency in renewable energy tracking.

The Granular difference

Granular Energy’s software brings innovation to the renewable energy certificate system. It matches consumers’ renewables needs with available certificates, and provides reporting with unprecedented transparency, detailing the exact origin of the energy they used. As well as improving the REC system, having additional insight on when and where renewables are in demand will trigger investment into renewable energy and storage to drive sector growth.

“There’s increasing scrutiny on organisations’ sustainability claims – particularly those regarding the source of the energy they use. At Drax Energy Solutions, we enable companies to achieve decarbonisation across their business. Being able to evidence their sustainable sourcing practices is a key component in this.”
Paul Miller – Sales and Marketing Director, Drax Energy Solutions

With Granular Energy’s software, Drax supply customers will receive reports that give clarity over details such as:

• Their total energy consumption
• Their ‘yearly matching’ (the amount of energy they consumed that we can directly align with energy from renewable sources)
• The breakdown of the technology (hydro, wind, solar, biomass, etc.) involved in delivering the matched renewable energy
• The impact on their reportable Scope 2 emissions
• The REGO certificates that we’ve allocated to their consumption

Fit for the future

What’s more, Granular Energy’s software can deliver matching on an annual, monthly, daily or even hourly and sub-hourly basis. This granularity will be critical over the coming years as the industry seeks more concrete evidence of sourcing practices.

Hourly matching enables consumers to demonstrate – by the hour – that the energy they’re consuming comes from renewable generation sources.

Over the course of a year, there are periods where the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. During these times, there may be insufficient renewable power available on the grid to satisfy consumers’ demands – even if they’re on renewable energy contracts.

“It’s all very well organisations saying they’re consuming renewable energy. But, in the future, they’re likely to be pressed to evidence this. And they’ll need to do that in a far more granular way - one that aligns each day or each hour’s consumption with a renewable source.”
Paul Miller – Sales and Marketing Director, Drax Energy Solutions

That’s what makes Drax and Granular Energy such suitable partners.

“We are excited to partner with Drax to support the management of their existing green offers and explore the development of new green tariffs. Drax will provide their customers with more traceable and transparent reporting on the sources of their renewable energy, enabling energy buyers to make more informed buying decisions. Drax is in a unique position to deliver clean power to the UK, and we’re glad to support their journey.”
Toby Ferenczi – Co-Founder and CEO, Granular Energy

The perfect match

As well as our extensive renewables generation through biomass, we also run hydro schemes and work with over 2,300 independent generators across the UK. We therefore have access to millions of units of renewable energy based on a variety of technologies.

“A customer on a Drax renewable energy contract might want to prove the origin of the power that it consumed in the middle of the night. We’ll be able to help. Granular Energy’s software will be able to allocate REGOs from, for example, our portfolio of wind-origin certificates and then populate the report we supply the customer.”
Paul Miller – Sales and Marketing Director, Drax Energy Solutions

Towards net zero, together

With the detailed insights from Granular Energy, we’re helping our customers:

• Decarbonise their operations
• Make informed energy purchasing decisions
• Stay ahead of industry standards
• Comply with the latest regulations
• Promote their sustainability credentials

Together, we’re helping the renewable generation market grow and accelerating the UK towards a renewables-based, carbon-free grid.

To learn more about our partnership with Granular Energy and the reports we’ll now be supplying, contact your Account Manager.