Carbon-Free Chronicles August 2026: the essential round-up of news and reports relating to hourly transparency. The big story of the month: Spain drafted the most ambitious hourly matching mandate yet for data centres, tying grid access itself to 80% hourly renewable coverage. Meanwhile in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa's first 24/7 solar-plus-storage baseload plant came online at a copper mine. Events are back up and running after a summer break so there are plenty of opportunities to find the team. Here is what has been on its radar. What Granular Energy is reading. Spain drafts ambitious hourly matching mandate for data centres. * Spain's Council of Ministers approved fast-track processing of a draft decree that would require new data centres above 1MW to cover at least 80% of their hourly electricity consumption with renewable generation commissioned within 18 months of the facility starting operation. * Compliance is measured hour by hour, a harder test than current guarantees of origin that rely on annual matching. Failure to comply would bring escalating grid tariff surcharges and, ultimately, loss of grid access. This would apply only to new projects. * It is a notably firmer stance than Brussels has taken on data centre sustainability so far, and sets a benchmark other member states may look to as data centre demand climbs across Europe. Africa's first 24/7 solar-plus-storage baseload plant goes online at a DRC copper mine. * CrossBoundary Energy's solar and battery storage hybrid plant reached commercial operation, supplying Kamoa Copper's mining complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo with over 30MW of dispatchable, round-the-clock renewable power at a 95% availability factor. * The project is expected to cut the mine's annual CO2 emissions by 78,750 tonnes by displacing diesel generation, alongside reducing exposure to diesel price volatility and supply risk. * It is a strong proof point that firm, round-the-clock renewable power is now deployable at scale for energy-intensive, off-grid industrial sites, not just in mature grid markets. The Guardian: a UK supplier's case for hourly matching. * In a Guardian feature, Good Energy's Fran Woodward argues that "100% renewable" REGO tariffs are a form of greenwashing, since certificates can be bought separately from the power itself with no guarantee the two ever line up in time. * Good Energy's suggested alternative is hourly matching, and the company is candid about where it stands today: 88% of customer demand matched within the same half hour, 90% within the hour, the rest only over the full year. * At Granular Energy Granular Energy provide the data infrastructure and hourly matching behind Good Energy's tariff. What Granular Energy is writing. What are RECs? A primer on the instrument behind clean energy claims. * Granular Energy published a primer covering what Renewable Energy Certificates are, why REC portfolios get complicated as companies scale up their clean energy reporting, and how a purpose-built management tool helps portfolio managers stay on top of class, geography and expiration without manual cross-referencing. * This blog focuses on the specific challenges and opportunities of the US environmental markets. Read it here. TotalEnergies x Granular Energy on why hourly beats annual matching. * Granular Energy teamed up with TotalEnergies on an explainer video making the case for hourly matching over annual matching, building on its existing work together on TotalEnergies' UK green supply certificate management. Watch it here. Where to meet Granular Energy. * September 17th - meet Bruno Menu in Paris at the OMC and French GO Symposium * September 21-24th - meet Priya Patel and Eleonore Lazat at the New York Climate Week. A few notable events: * September 21st at Future Currence and at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and EnergyTag event on Dispelling Scope 2 Myths, where Eleonore will be speaking on a panel. * September 22nd, Priya will be hosting and moderating the Climate Group 24/7 Solutions Accelerator. Corporates, get in touch to join or learn more. * September 22nd, Eleonore will be speaking on a panel at the Xpansiv Climate Week Summit * September 24-25th - meet Camille Lamb, Toby Ferenczi, Eoin Halton and more of the team at London Energy Trading Week. Find Granular Energy at booth 172. Granular Energy is also hosting a dinner on the 24th, so reach out to enquire about joining. More insights. Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) are the instrument companies use to prove their electricity purchases come from renewable sources. As more companies report their usage of clean energy, REC portfolios grow alongside, creating challenges and liabilities. This article covers what RECs are, why REC management can get complicated, and how a purpose-built REC management tool can help portfolio managers. News · 02.08.2026 July delivered multiple advancements in hourly matching. From a clarified GHG Protocol direction to live hourly RECs, hourly matching is taking hold on a global scale. From GHGP and EnergyTag announcements, to the first hourly RECs in Texas and perspectives on managing data centre demand, EAC news came in from around the world. Time to dig in to this month's happenings.

Renewables markets at a crossroads: its takeaways from the RECs Market Meeting. Granular Energy joined the 14th edition of the RECs Market Meeting last week in Prague as one of the meeting sponsors. Here are its main takeaways: The conference's theme, "Renewables markets at a crossroads", captured the mood accurately: after two decades of growth, the GO market is maturing into a more complex environment. Structurally low prices and recent price increases, while mounting pressure from evolving regulatory standards is forcing the market to ask harder questions about its own credibility and long-term relevance. Generally the atmosphere in Prague was notably positive, and for straightforward reasons. EAC prices in the EU are above €1.50 per MWh lately, driven partly by low Norwegian hydro levels compressing near-term supply, and sentiment-driven momentum has taken hold. Spot prices are trading at a premium to forward curves. After years of price levels that many participants found discouraging, the uptick has improved confidence. Granular Energy was present with Eleonore, Camille, Eoin, and Pal in Prague. What follows is its reflections on the official positions argued from the podium, and the rather more candid views exchanged between sessions: Eleonore: reading the room and pushing back. Eleonore, who spoke on one of the conference's panels, was alert to the fragility behind the price hike. Higher prices send a signal to generators that renewable certificates carry real value. But the market's long-term relevance cannot rest on a weather-driven supply squeeze. The opening keynote set the stakes directly: are voluntary renewable energy markets sustainable, or will only compliance mechanisms deliver change at the pace the transition requires? Voluntary action has structural limits: buyers who find the market too complex or too expensive will simply exit. At the same time, mandatory rules must be pragmatic enough to avoid an unnecessary rise in complexity. Eleonore used her panel appearance to make a call for market paticipants to be more ambitious and evolve the EAC market to be more entrenched and essential to the energy transition, at risk of staying still and becoming irrelevant. Voluntary markets are not an end state. They are a testing ground for innovations around EACs, where stakeholders can iron out some of the existing hurdles while creating financial value in the process. Eoin: a missing argument. "Demand destruction" was a recurring worry in the sessions Eoin attended: would stricter matching rules push buyers out of the market? Yet the argument undercut itself. The same speakers warning stricter rules would drive demand away also insisted credibility and integrity are what keep demand in the market. However, credibility is what stricter, more transparent rules are built to deliver. The same is true of oversupply in the EAC markets, which the conference agreed is damaging: prices that fall too low erode the very credibility the market depends on, since a certificate that costs almost nothing ends up signalling almost nothing. However, potential cost increases was another recurring argument used against stricter matching rules. A more interesting question went largely undiscussed: if demand does leave, which demand is it likely to be? If some of that demand thins out, a price floor for EACs could begin to re-establish itself. Stricter matching works the same way on the supply side by creating scarcity when renewable generation is low, exactly when the grid most needs to direct investment toward new assets like storage. Managed scarcity is not simply a threat to the market; it creates price signals highlighting periods where supply is needed. However, as rightly pointed out during the conference, the task is to balance this against the hurdle rate facing new entrants, who sit at different stages of their decarbonisation journeys. It must be high enough to mean something, but not so high it shuts out players early in their decarbonisation journey. After all, as everyone agreed in the end, the goal is impact. Camille: a global market amid growing standards pressure. One of the more visible shifts at RMM 2026 was the growing presence of EAC market participants from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The topics debated in Prague are relevant globally to industry players as well as buyers. Each certificate system operates under different registry rules, subsidy frameworks, and disclosure requirements. A buyer making renewable energy claims across multiple geographies faces a genuinely fragmented landscape, from how to procure effectively to how to account correctly amidst changing standards, which raise the bar for what qualifies as a valid claim. As one session put it: the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. The market has built real infrastructure over twenty years. The risk of fragmentation isn't just that it slows any one region down; it's that divergence across markets erodes confidence in the system as a whole. For an instrument whose value is fundamentally tied to trust, that's not a secondary concern. The conversations in Prague revealed how much active debate remains, and showed there's a clear appetite to resolve these questions together rather than diverge further. Pal: the complexity problem is solvable, but the work has to start now. Beneath every debate in Prague: matching rules, standards, harmonisation, one constraint kept recurring: complexity. Participants cited it as one of the primary reasons for caution. Complexity, however, is not a reason to hold back. Power markets are among the most intricate systems in the global economy: balancing mechanisms, settlement regimes, capacity markets, interconnection rules. Yet they function precisely because suppliers, traders, and technology providers have built the expertise and infrastructure to manage that complexity. EAC markets don't have to be that different. Much of the operational burden stems from fragmented registry systems, diverging local regulations, and manual workflows that have not kept pace with the market's ambitions. That is a solvable problem: through better tooling, automation, and the market participants who are already building the systems to manage it... This matters more now than before. The demand for clean, credibly documented energy is rising, driven by AI infrastructure, data centres, and the electrification of industry and transport. Keeping complexity manageable is not a technical afterthought. It is the precondition for everything else the market wants to achieve. The work digitising registries, automating workflows, harmonising standards should start now, regardless of where the policy debates land. More insights. News · 11.06.2026 May 2026 was a month in which the economics, the standards, and the markets all moved in the same direction. Firm 24/7 renewables are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Mandatory hourly disclosure is entering corporate climate frameworks for the first time. And in markets from China to Australia, it's clear hourly matching at scale is coming. Here is what has been on its radar this month. Ian Lieblich has been helping Granular Energy explore the Australian energy market, which has one of the highest rates of renewable energy penetration in the world. On the back of a recent budget revisions, he's written down his thoughts on what's new, what's changed - or not, and why there is reason for excitement in the Australian energy transition.