VALLEY FORGE, PA — PJM Environmental Information Services, Inc. recently announced it will provide hourly, time-stamped certificates for PJM generation starting in March 2023, answering the growing demand for procuring and tracking carbon-free energy around the clock.
PJM Environmental Information Services, Inc. (PJM EIS), a subsidiary of PJM Interconnection, LLC, manages the Generation Attribute Tracking System (GATS). GATS is a trading platform designed to meet the needs of buyers and sellers involved in the carbon-free energy market, from homeowners and aggregators to state and federal agencies and other market participants seeking to reduce their carbon footprint.
For both the electric utilities and generation suppliers, GATS helps meet state and federal environmental requirements associated with electric operations, such as renewable portfolio standard (RPS) compliance and emissions disclosure.
Each certificate represents one megawatt-hour of electricity produced and includes generator location, emissions output, fuel source and date the generator went online. Currently, GATS produces certificates based on how much energy a resource produces in a month. Now GATS becomes the first registry in the U.S. to produce hourly, time-stamped certificates to reflect not only where, but the hour and date when energy is produced.
“We recognize that customers are interested in more granular, real-time data that can be used to innovate new ways to incentivize clean energy,” said Ken Schuyler, President – PJM EIS. “Using the unique data offered by GATS, customers can make more informed choices about their energy use.”
Advocates of the 24/7 clean-energy approach maintain that that hourly certificates can help electricity consumers, including large government and business customers, tailor their energy consumption to the availability of carbon-free energy at all hours of the day. Such demand expressed through the market could also incentivize new carbon-free generation resources to serve the hours of the day when renewable energy production is currently lacking.
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