Energy tech firm Becour and quality assurance and risk management company DNV GL have joined forces with Ingka Group, operator of 383 IKEA stores in 31 countries, to pilot a solution that helps companies manage and assure their renewable electricity use from source to socket.
The challenge
Several big brands have announced ambitions to source only renewable electricity, but they have struggled to implement them due to the complicated structure of power distribution.
When companies claim to source renewable electricity, they must document the purchase of an amount of renewable electricity equal to their consumption. This practice often does not address the time of production and consumption but only looks at the total electricity consumed over a year. Therefore, companies often have no guarantee that the electricity they consume at a certain hour actually does come from sustainable sources. This is the 24/7 challenge that Becour and DNV GL together with Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, has piloted a solution for.
The solution
The pilot linked 5 wind farms in Finland managed by Ingka Investments to 14 IKEA stores and warehouses in The Netherlands including their onsite solar panel installations. This required matching generation and its associated renewable electricity attributes with consumption meter data. Once the matching is done the right number of attributes can be transferred and cancelled.
“We soon realized that the data structures and APIs we needed in order to develop a useful tool for managing renewable energy agreements across borders really didn’t exist. This has been a process of defining new rules and creating an entire new system” – Hans Petter Kildal, CEO at Becour.
In order to create the missing rules, Becour and DNV GL have defined 24/7 matching of renewable energy and developed measures to ensure that the process to verify 24/7 claims can be trusted. DNV GL have designed a best practice for companies to document their consumption of renewable energy on an hourly basis and created the algorithms to verify this continuously on REact (Becour’s renewable energy platform). REact is the first platform in the world that enables companies to manage international and large-scale renewable energy flows.
The pilot will help Becour and DNV GL to finalise the development of the tools needed so that many other companies can create transparent links between renewable generation and consumption to support the transition to 100% renewable electricity.
Improving sustainability claims
Achieving hourly matching of electricity use with production across borders will make sourcing more transparent and credible and increase the accuracy of any claims to have reduced emissions of greenhouse gases.
"24/7 is the ability for companies to link renewable energy consumption to production in real-time. The multinational companies that are raising the bar when it comes to sustainability ambitions want to prove they are using renewable energy all the time, and that this claim can be verified. This builds trust in their claims and reporting, and ultimately in their brands.” Beate Norheim, Energy Markets and Technology Consultant, DNV GL
About Becour
Becour is an energy tech company providing premium renewable energy solutions to companies globally. Becour has developed REact – a worldwide, B2B service for sourcing and managing documented renewable energy.
CEO, Hans Petter Kildal, contributed to designing the guarantees of origin system in Europe. He founded Becour in 2018 to challenge the existing market structures, which are currently preventing the system to reach its full potential.
About DNV GL
DNV GL is the independent expert in risk management and assurance, operating in more than 100 countries. Through its broad experience and deep expertise DNV GL advances safety and sustainable performance, sets industry benchmarks, and inspires and invents solutions.
Whether assessing a new ship design, optimizing the performance of a wind farm, analyzing sensor data from a gas pipeline or certifying a food company’s supply chain, DNV GL enables its customers and their stakeholders to make critical decisions with confidence.
Driven by its purpose, to safeguard life, property, and the environment, DNV GL helps tackle the challenges and global transformations facing its customers and the world today and is a trusted voice for many of the world’s most successful and forward-thinking companies. As of 1st March 2021, DNV GL will change its name to DNV.