Hourly Matching for Scope 2 Emissions: Moving Beyond Annual Renewable Accounting

Current corporate carbon accounting often relies on annual statistics to match electricity use with renewable energy purchases. This creates a gap where companies claim green power even when the grid is running on fossil fuels in real time, reducing the actual incentive to build new renewable capacity. The GHG Protocol is consulting on a shift toward hourly matching. This approach requires renewable generation to align with consumption every hour, driving demand for energy storage and real-time data integration to ensure true decarbonization of the power grid.