Cleaner Tech

New Group Trading Hourly Power Credits Forms in Bid to Clean Up the Grid

Two tech giants will be among a number of companies trading hourly clean energy credits that could help get more zero-carbon power on the grid.

A Google logo outside the Google Cloud data center ahead of its ceremonial opening in Hanau, Germany. The company, along with Microsoft, is working on a new power trading scheme that could help reduce its carbon emissions.

Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg
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Google and Microsoft Corp. joined forces with energy companies to start trading hourly credits for zero-carbon electricity next year, a critical move in their pursuit to eventually power their data centers without greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.

The tech giants, along with Constellation Energy Corp. and AES Corp., are helping to develop a platform to trade so-called granular certificates — zero-carbon energy credits for specific locations at specific times — as futures contracts on the Intercontinental Exchange, according to LevelTen Energy, the energy transactions platform developer leading the initiative that’s dubbed the Granular Certificate Trading Alliance.