Flexidao to scale Google’s carbon-free energy tracking globally

Barcelona-headquartered digital solution provider Flexidao is collaborating with Google to track and validate its carbon-free energy portfolio across the globe.

At the heart of the process is the creation and utilisation of time-based energy attribute certificates that can then validate Google’s 2030 goal to achieve 24/7 carbon-free energy use.

The initiative was launched in 2021 through a pilot in Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Flexidao provided automatic access to hourly metering data on electricity consumption and generation from clean electricity contracts via its CFE Inventory data collection and aggregation platform.

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From this data, the time-based energy attribute certificates could be created, following the approach of the EnergyTag standard.

Building on the outcomes of the pilot, Flexidao extended its work with Google across the EMEA region and is now expanding globally to cover North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.

As part of this global rollout, Flexidao is streamlining data collection by identifying sources for electricity data from national data hubs, utility systems and grid operators.

Flexidao also reports integrating with Google’s BigQuery data warehouse to further enhance the data collection, and collaborating with Electricity Maps, which monitors and maps carbon emissions in near real time, to incorporate hourly emission factors into the software.

“When we set out to achieve our 24/7 carbon-free energy goal, we knew that it would require a wide range of advanced tools and technologies,” says Savannah Goodman, Data and Software Climate Solutions Lead at Google.

“Flexidao has been a key collaborator on our journey, first piloting a digital solution to enable hourly clean energy validation for our facilities and now bringing this solution to scale. They are helping us accelerate our electricity management and verification process and provide us with an end-to-end solution for 24/7 carbon-fee energy reporting.”

Energy attribute certificate management

For Flexidao one of the most significant benefits reported is the adoption of an energy attribute certificate management and verification process.

The company works with energy attribute certificate registries to streamline the manual task of compiling, retiring and comparing the certificates with meter/invoice data for better oversight and management of such portfolios.

Simone Accornero, CEO of Flexidao, describes the initiative as the “kicking off a journey. This collaboration exemplifies how our tool can save organizations time and resources when monitoring their electricity supply and pursuing impactful energy procurement approaches.”

Google was a Series A investor in Flexidao in 2022.

As a member of the Google Cloud Ready Sustainability ecosystem, Flexidao intends to make its CFE Inventory software available on Google Cloud Marketplace in 2024.