Enabling hourly clean energy validation for Google

Discover how Flexidao, one of our portfolio start-ups, is supporting Google in tracking the source and carbon footprint of their energy usage in real-time. The partnership is aimed at ensuring that all Google’s power sources become 100% renewable, advancing the company’s efforts towards 24/7 carbon-free energy.

Google has set an ambitious goal of operating 24/7 on carbon-free energy CFE globally by 2030. In order to reach this goal, it plans to scale the use of Time-based Energy Attribute Certificates (T-EACs or Granular Certificates) across its global carbon-free energy portfolio. T-EACs enable clean energy generation and trading to be validated on an hourly basis.

 

This granularity is essential for companies to ensure they are indeed procuring 100% renewable energy all of the time. Existing schemes used to certify the carbon footprint of electricity usage match a company’s energy demand with renewable energy on a global and annual basis. This doesn’t account for the real-world’s geographical constraints and the daily, or hourly, fluctuations where electricity may come from fossil fuels, such as when there is not enough wind or solar power available.

Flexidao has developed a unique software platform that uses blockchain technology to trace and certify electricity from production to consumption, enabling credible and verifiable claims on the true carbon content of electricity, every hour of every day. Flexidao’s dashboards collate all the data and provide customers with an overview of relevant KPIs for their decision-making and reporting. The insights include an inventory of renewable energy, contracts, associated energy certificates, and emissions.

 

This data enables customers to understand the origin and carbon footprint of the energy they consume and take action to procure cleaner electricity and drive decarbonisation of their operations, making 24/7 carbon-free energy a reality.

 

Flexidao and Google started working together in 2021 to pilot the software in Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Building on the success of this pilot, their collaboration has expanded to fully digitize and automate hourly tracking and incorporate T-EACs across Google’s global carbon-free energy portfolio. The rapid upscaling of the technology is supported by a $6.5 million investment round led by SET Ventures, which includes investments from EIT, InnoEnergy, Google and others.

Flexidao’s solution enables automation, centralization and greater visibility to help Google reach its emission reduction goals. Automation simplifies the recurring resource-intensive task of high-resolution data collection and quality assurance.

 

The software consolidates Google’s renewable energy portfolio of contracts, metering data, and certificates within one unified central platform. And it provides greater visibility into hours when Google relies on carbon-intensive electricity, a crucial factor for tracking T-EACs and achieving its emission reduction targets.