Governments and private organizations are increasingly setting ambitious decarbonization goals. These entities frequently rely on wind and solar generation resources to offset their electricity consumption. But since clean energy MWh aren’t all created equal, tracking environmental goals in traditional units of MWh doesn’t measure the carbon emissions reductions actually achieved. Clean resources located close to high-emitting plants, whose output aligns with times of high grid emissions intensity, or that can shape their injections have high carbon value ignored by traditional MWh-based accounting. Carbon-based metrics like Locational Marginal Emissions can help. In our 2-year analysis of renewable energy projects across Texas, we found that directing clean energy deployment to the highest-value renewable projects has the potential to double the carbon impact as compared to a more traditional annual energy matching approach.
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