Renewable gas certification ready to go

BraveTrace – formerly known as Certified Energy – will soon be launching a renewable gas certificate for use with biogas, biomethane and hydrogen.

Developed in consultation with industry over recent years, the certificate will attest to the      credentials of renewable gas production - such as that Ecogas will produce for injection into Firstgas’s network later this year.

The certificate will join the stable of renewable energy certificates BraveTrace has already developed and taken to market for renewable or zero-carbon electricity.

BraveTrace’s executive director Tim Middlehurst is overseeing the development of the certificate.

He says its purpose is to enable consumers to credibly claim ownership of the lower-emission renewable gas they are buying, often at a premium cost. Even if, due to the mixing of renewable and non-renewable gas in the grid, the gas that reaches the consumer may only contain a small proportion of actual renewable gas.

“This clear transfer of ownership is important for the buyer to justify paying a higher price, as it allows them to claim the benefits of the purchase such as a reduction in reportable emissions.”

Production of renewable gas is much more environmentally-friendly than natural gas, and the buyer who’s paying a premium to support renewable gas wants to be very clear that they own the production attributes, Middlehurst says.

“So that they are the only ones able to say they’re using it – even if they don’t receive the actual molecules.”    

The recognition and transaction of those renewable attributes is fundamental to the value proposition of certification, and biogas more broadly, he says.

“Within our secure tracking registry, a producer can issue a digital instrument [certificate] that tracks title to those attributes, and through a secure transfer process, enables us to verify who’s got them, and by definition, doesn’t have them,” he says.

If the person who’s buying the gas doesn’t care about these attributes and isn’t interested in paying extra for them, the producer could, via the tradeable certificate, sell the attributes to someone else.

“We’ve had an example quite recently where somebody was looking to produce biogas and had the opportunity to sell the raw gas to a co-located gas user.”

If this local buyer does not value the renewable attributes, certification enables the producer to take those attributes to the open market and trade them to somebody else, unbundled from the sale of gas, in order to support the project.

“This flexibility is going to be important if we are going to maximise the amount of renewable gas produced in New Zealand.”

Middlehurst says they have been working closely with the Gas Industry Company, leading producers and consumers and have had the rules in place since last year.

“We've been ready to go for a long time and the process has been engaging with producers, understanding their needs, and being ready for them when they're ready to inject.”