Renewable Electricity Claim Checker
“We run on 100% renewable electricity” is one of the most common corporate environmental claims and one of the least often tested. It is also more precise than most people realise: it is a statement about contractual instruments meeting eight specific criteria, not a statement about the electrons in your building or the emissions on your balance sheet. This checker applies those criteria to what you actually hold, and tells you which are open.
“100% renewable” is a claim about certificates, not emissions. The Scope 2 quality criteria must all hold, and one failure makes an instrument ineligible, and your location-based figure still has to be reported.
Seven questions, about a minute. The checker applies the eight quality criteria the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance sets for contractual instruments. They are cumulative — an instrument meeting seven of the eight is not eligible — so this reports which are open rather than how close you are.
- Stop stating that the electricity emissions are zero. A market-based figure of zero is a statement about instruments meeting all eight criteria across all consumption, and that is a narrower claim than the one being made.
- Re-source the out-of-market certificates. Criterion 5 requires the instrument to be issued in the same market as the consumption it covers, and it is the criterion that fails most often in practice.
- Report the covered portion as covered rather than the whole. Certificates that cover most consumption support a claim about most consumption, and describing it accurately costs nothing.
- Add the location-based figure back to the report. Both methods are required where both apply, and publishing only the market-based one is a non-compliance however good the certificates are.
- This claim is public-facing, and consumer-protection regimes police environmental claims separately from any accounting standard. We do not adjudicate the CMA Green Claims Code, the FTC Green Guides or the EU Green Claims Directive, and this checker says nothing about your exposure under them.
What would change this verdict
- Closing criterion 5 changes the instruments from ineligible to eligible, which is the difference between a claim you can support and one you cannot.
- Reporting both figures closes the dual-reporting finding on its own, and it does not depend on anything about the certificates.
What was checked — the criteria, your position, and the clause behind each
| Checked | Your position | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| The claim made | Electricity emissions are zeroWider than the evidenceopen | Scope 2 Guidance — market-based method |
| Instrument | Unbundled certificatesRecognised typemet | Scope 2 Guidance — contractual instruments |
| 03 Retired | Retired in a registry, naming usCriterion metmet | Scope 2 Guidance Table 7.1 criterion 3 |
| 05 Market boundary | Partly sourced outside the marketCriterion OPENopen | Scope 2 Guidance Table 7.1 criterion 5 |
| 01 Generation rate | Wind, solar or hydroCriterion metmet | Scope 2 Guidance Table 7.1 criterion 1 |
| Coverage | Most consumption, not allPartialopen | Scope 2 Guidance — coverage of the claim |
| Dual reporting | Market-based onlyNon-complianceopen | Scope 2 Guidance — dual reporting required |
| Consumer law | A public-facing claimNot assessed hereopen | No standards page held — named, not adjudicated |
Why this verdict: The claim asserts that electricity emissions are zero, which under the Scope 2 Guidance is a statement that every unit of consumption is covered by an instrument satisfying all eight quality criteria. The criteria are cumulative rather than weighted: an instrument meeting seven of the eight is not eligible for Tier 1 use at all, and here the market-boundary criterion is not met. Coverage is also partial, so even eligible instruments would support a claim about part of consumption rather than the whole of it. Separately, only the market-based figure is reported, and both methods are required where both apply — that finding stands on its own and is not repaired by improving the certificates. Because the claim is public-facing, a separate body of consumer-protection law also applies, and this checker does not assess it.
The eight quality criteria are cumulative: an instrument meeting seven of them is not eligible for Tier 1 use at all, which is why this table reports each as met or open rather than scoring the portfolio. Nothing of yours is sized here — coverage is reported as full, partial or unknown and never as a fraction. Consumer-protection law is named and not adjudicated: we hold no reviewed page on the regimes that police how a renewable claim is worded, and a checker should not rule on instruments it has not read.
The Scope 2 Guidance is under revision, and the issues in live debate — hourly matching, deliverability, the future of unbundled certificates — are exactly the ones that decide whether a claim like yours still works. We will email you when that lands.
This checker applies the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance quality criteria as our reviewed standards page records them. It does not assess your exposure under advertising or consumer-protection law, it does not calculate your Scope 2 figures, and it does not replace assurance — it tells you what an assurance provider would find open before you engage one.
What this verdict means
Five outcomes, ordered by how confident you are likely to be while being wrong. The top one belongs to the organisation with genuine certificates, real retirements and a claim the criteria do not reach.
Not supported
The claim asserts more than the instruments can carry — usually that emissions are zero, or that coverage is total when it is partial. Nothing is wrong with your certificates. The sentence in front of them is wider than what they support.
Dual reporting missing
Your report shows one Scope 2 figure. Both are required where both apply, and this finding stands entirely apart from the quality of your portfolio — it is not repaired by buying better certificates, and it is the cheaper of the two problems to fix.
Criteria open
One or more of the eight quality criteria is not met. Because they are cumulative, this is not a near miss: an instrument failing any one criterion is not eligible for the top tier and is reassessed wherever it does qualify.
Unquantified
Nothing you are saying is unsupported, and it is saying very little. An unquantified “renewable electricity” gives a reader no way to tell whether you cover all your consumption or a tenth of it — which usually undersells a portfolio that would survive being described precisely.
Supported
The criteria hold across the consumption they are applied to and the disclosure carries both figures. That is a statement about Scope 2 accounting, and not about how the claim is worded in your marketing.
The eight criteria every certificate must meet
The market-based method lets you reflect what you contracted for rather than what the local grid emitted. In exchange, the Scope 2 Guidance sets eight quality criteria that every contractual instrument must satisfy — every certificate, every PPA-bundled attribute, every disclosed green tariff.
| # | Criterion | What it requires |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Conveys the emission rate | The instrument conveys the direct GHG emission rate of the electricity generated. A wind certificate conveys a rate near zero; a biomass certificate does not. |
| 2 | The only claim | It is the only instrument carrying that emission-rate claim for that quantity of electricity. |
| 3 | Tracked and retired | It is tracked, and redeemed, retired or cancelled by or on behalf of the reporting company. |
| 4 | Close in time | It is issued and redeemed as close as possible to the period of consumption it covers. |
| 5 | Same market | It comes from the same market as the operations whose consumption it covers. |
| 6 | Delivered electricity (utility rates) | A utility-specific factor is calculated on delivered electricity and includes the certificates retired for customers. Renewable generation whose attributes were sold counts at the residual mix. |
| 7 | Claim to you alone (direct purchase or on-site) | All instruments conveying the claim go to the reporting company only. No other instrument is issued for that electricity, and it carries no claim for a utility to use. |
| 8 | Residual mix | An adjusted residual mix is available for consumer calculations, or the reporting company discloses that it is missing. |
Source: GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance (2015), Table 7.1, in our words. Criteria 1 to 5 apply to every contractual instrument; 6 and 7 apply to the cases named; 8 applies to any use of the market-based method.
Why one failure is enough
An instrument that fails one criterion is not eligible for top-tier use. There is no partial score; it is reassessed at the highest tier where it does qualify, which for a failed certificate usually means the residual mix or the grid average. There is no partial credit and no threshold.
That is why this checker reports criteria as met or open rather than producing a percentage. A score would imply a bar to clear, and there isn’t one.
The two that fail most often
Our Scope 2 Guidance page names them, and both are administrative rather than conceptual — which is precisely why they survive so long unnoticed.
Criterion 5, market boundary. Certificates bought in a market other than the one where the electricity was consumed. It happens because certificates are cheap in some markets and scarce in others, and because “renewable is renewable” is an intuitive and wrong way to think about an instrument whose entire function is to be attributable to a place.
Criterion 3, retirement. Certificates purchased, held, and never formally cancelled in the registry with the buyer named. The purchase is real, the invoice is real, and the claim is not supported until the retirement happens.
A certificate is not an emission rate
Criterion 1 is the one that most often surprises people, and it is the one that breaks the mental shortcut underneath most renewable claims.
A certificate must reflect the emission rate of the generation behind it. A certificate from a wind farm carries the wind rate, which is close to zero. A certificate from a biomass plant carries the biomass rate, which is not. The instrument cannot be assumed to convey zero without the underlying generation data.
The shortcut being broken here is renewable equals zero. It is true enough for wind, solar and hydro that nobody notices it is a shortcut — and then a portfolio picks up biomass or energy-from-waste certificates, which are legitimately renewable under most definitions and are not zero-emission. The certificate is valid. The rate applied to it is an assumption.
If you cannot say what technology sits behind your instruments, you cannot say what rate they carry, and the market-based figure built on them is an estimate with an unexamined input in it.
Why your location-based number does not go away
This is the finding that has nothing to do with your certificates and is the most common single non-compliance in the whole area.
Location-based and market-based are both required where both apply. Neither is primary. The Guidance does not prefer one, and reporting only one is a non-compliance whichever one you keep — including when the one you keep is the flattering one.
The reason is that they answer different questions for different readers. An investor assessing physical exposure to a carbonising or decarbonising grid wants the location-based figure. A buyer assessing your procurement strategy wants the market-based one. Publishing only the market-based number does not make the location-based reality go away; it removes a reader’s ability to see it.
If the checker returns a dual-reporting finding, that one is closeable this week and depends on nothing about your portfolio. The location-based figure exists for every consumer of grid electricity whether or not it is published — see the Scope 2 methodology for how it is built.
What “100% renewable” actually has to mean
Put the pieces together and the claim resolves into something quite specific. To say it accurately you need instruments that satisfy the criteria, covering all of your consumption, in every market where you consume, for the period you are reporting — with the generation rate behind them known rather than assumed.
RE100 operationalises the same idea for its members and is worth reading even if you are not one, because it makes the boundary questions explicit: the denominator is consumption across your operational control boundary; leased buildings where the landlord controls supply are excluded; heat and cooling from on-site combustion are out of scope entirely, because RE100 governs renewable electricity and not renewable energy generally.
None of that makes the claim unreachable. It makes it a claim about a portfolio you can describe, which is a different and more defensible thing than a claim about an intention.
What this checker does not decide
It does not assess your exposure under advertising or consumer-protection law, and that is a deliberate refusal. “100% renewable” is a marketing claim as well as an accounting one, and the regimes that police marketing claims — the CMA’s Green Claims Code, the FTC’s Green Guides, the EU Green Claims Directive — apply their own tests. A claim can satisfy all eight Scope 2 criteria and still be challenged for how it is presented to a consumer.
Each of those three is documented separately, and this checker still does not rule on them: they turn on how a claim is presented to a consumer rather than on how the electricity was accounted for, and the two questions have different tests and different evidence. The checker names the exposure and routes to the instrument rather than ruling on it.
It does not calculate your Scope 2 figures, and it does not size your coverage. Telling you what fraction of consumption your certificates reach would be a calculation about your inventory; coverage is reported as full, partial or unknown, and the arithmetic stays with you.
And it does not check whether the factors behind your location-based figure are current — that is the Emission Factor Vintage Checker‘s question, and it is worth asking separately, because the grid factors underneath a location-based number have moved considerably in recent editions.
How we keep this current
The criteria applied here are read from our own reviewed page for the Scope 2 Guidance, which is maintained as the Guidance is. That matters more than usual right now: the Guidance is under active revision, and the issues in live debate are precisely the ones that decide whether a portfolio like yours still works — hourly rather than annual matching, tighter deliverability requirements, and the future of unbundled certificates altogether.
A claim that is comfortably supported under the current rules may not be under the revised ones, and the change will not be gradual. That is what the re-check in the result panel watches for.
Checked against corpus edition 2026.284.
Frequently Asked Questions
Only if the certificates satisfy the quality criteria, and only for the portion of consumption they actually cover. A certificate that fails any one criterion — out of market, unretired, wrong vintage — is not eligible for top-tier use at all. And a market-based figure of zero is not the same as having no Scope 2 emissions: your location-based figure is unchanged and still has to be reported.
Yes, and it is the most common non-compliance in this area. Both methods are required where both apply, and the Guidance does not prefer either. Reporting one is non-compliant whichever one you keep — the finding is symmetrical, and it applies just as much to a company that publishes only the location-based number.
Only within a defined single market. Criterion 5 requires the instrument to be issued in the same market as the consumption it covers, and the boundary definitions are the most operationally consequential part of the criteria. The European single market is treated as one; buying US certificates against European consumption, or I-RECs from one country against another, is non-compliant unless an explicit single-market boundary exists.
Usually yes as renewable, and not as zero-emission — which is the distinction that matters here. Criterion 1 requires the instrument to reflect the actual emission rate of the generation behind it, and a biomass plant does not have a near-zero rate the way a wind farm does. The certificate can be perfectly valid while the zero you applied to it is an assumption you have not tested.
It is the difference between supporting the claim and not. Criterion 3 requires formal retirement in the registry with you named as beneficiary; holding an unretired instrument at year end does not satisfy it. This is one of the two most common failures, and unlike most findings on this page it is usually closeable in an afternoon.
Then a market-based claim for that consumption is not available to you, and saying so is the accurate position. Some markets have no tracking infrastructure at all. The answer is not to source instruments from elsewhere — that fails criterion 5 — but to report those sites on the location-based figure and describe the coverage of your claim honestly.
Only if it conveys specified GHG attributes and can be evidenced against the criteria. A supplier describing a tariff as green is not itself a contractual instrument — criterion 1 requires the attributes to be conveyed, and a contract for “renewable electricity” with nothing specified does not satisfy it. Ask the supplier what is retired on your behalf, in which registry, and for what generation.
They are being revised now, and the open questions are the consequential ones: whether matching moves from annual to hourly, whether deliverability requirements tighten, and what happens to unbundled certificates. A portfolio that is comfortably compliant today may not be afterwards, and the shift would not be gradual — which is a reason to know precisely what you hold rather than approximately.