Frequently Asked Questions

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) is the global standard-setter for corporate carbon accounting. Hosted by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the GHGP provides the foundational rules for how companies report their emissions. Currently, the GHGP is rewriting the Scope 2 rules of the voluntary clean energy market, which will dictate how companies finance and claim clean energy purchases for decades to come.

Mandatory hourly matching is a proposed carbon accounting rule that would require companies to match their electricity consumption with clean energy generation on a strict hour-by-hour basis within the same local grid region. Under current Scope 2 rules, companies can match their electricity use with clean energy purchased annually across broad geographies, allowing them to target their investments in the dirtiest grids where project development maximizes decarbonization impact.

Making hourly matching a rigid, universal mandate will stall the global clean energy transition, hurt grid reliability, and decrease overall climate impact. The proposed mandate threatens the voluntary clean energy market in two major ways:

• It traps capital: By enforcing strict local geographic boundaries, a mandate restricts investment to wealthy and oversaturated grids rather than the regions that need clean energy the most.

• It locks out businesses: It effectively bans the load aggregation that everyday mid-market businesses rely on to finance new clean energy projects, prioritizing strict accounting optics over real-world climate impact.

No, there are critical gaps in the availability of data required to perform accurate hourly load-matched 24/7 accounting. Most companies do not have access to hourly consumption data, hourly grid emissions data, and hourly project production data. Mandating this framework would force companies to rely heavily on untested proxy data and modeling.

No, substituting actual hourly data with estimates does not increase the accounting integrity of energy matching. Because actual hourly consumption and production data are frequently unavailable, the current proposal forces companies to rely on estimates, completely undermining the core argument for adopting a strict 24/7 framework in the first place.

If the GHGP mandates hourly load-matched 24/7 accounting, companies of all sizes will face a significant compliance burden. Rather than incentivizing grid innovation, a mandate will force companies to reconsider the long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) used to aggregate load across regions. This will ultimately freeze the project financing that is absolutely critical to building new carbon-free energy.

"Hourly matching" refers to the newly proposed Scope 2 carbon accounting rule. “24/7” represents a 100% hourly matching score (matching every hour of load each day of the week with an equal amount of clean power), yet the two terms are often used interchangeably to refer to the overarching new carbon accounting proposal. Under this proposed mandate, companies would be required to match their electricity consumption with clean energy generation on a strict hour-by-hour basis, and that clean energy must be generated within the same local grid region where the company's facilities are located. This represents a massive shift from current accounting rules, which allow companies to match their energy use with clean electricity purchased over the course of a full year across broader geographic areas.

"Two-pillar" accounting refers to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's current proposal for Scope 2 clean energy matching, which relies on only two criteria—time (hourly matching) and location (deliverability). Notably, this proposed mandate excludes the critical third pillar: additionality, which is focused on decarbonization impact and ensures that the investment actually brings new clean energy projects to the grid rather than just buying power from existing ones. Research shows that this two-pillar approach is significantly less effective than impact-focused procurement because it prioritizes matching timestamps and geography over actual real-world carbon reduction.