The right time for real-time? Stakeholder perspectives on the role of temporal matching in renewable energy procurement in Australia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13065670 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shanil Samarakoon (0000-0002-9492-0224, UNSW Sydney, corresponding author), Mike B Roberts (0000-0002-5870-6036, UNSW Sydney), Dylan McConnell (0000-0001-8232-9632, UNSW Sydney), Ellie Kallmier (UNSW Sydney), Iain Macgill (0000-0002-9587-6835, UNSW Sydney), Anna Bruce (0000-0003-1820-4039, UNSW Sydney) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 124 |
| Pages | 104059-104059 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Energy Research & Social Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2214-6296 • E-ISSN: 2214-6326 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.erss.2025.104059 |
| OpenAlex | W4409419220 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
Amid mounting stakeholder pressure to decarbonise electricity consumption, corporate renewable electricity (RE) procurement has played a significant role in driving investment in RE capacity in the Global North. In recent years, the emergence of 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) contracting, championed by the United Nations 24/7 Carbon-free Energy Compact, and corporations such as Google and Microsoft, represents a more ambitious form of corporate RE procurement than increasingly widespread “net zero” or “100 % renewable” goals. Responding to deficiencies in current carbon accounting and RE certification regimes, proponents of 24/7 CFE argue that a more granular focus on the temporal and spatial attributes of procured renewable electricity better reflects actual emissions and helps drive investment into the right mix of technologies to make real-time RE possible. In this paper, we draw on Australia as a case study, a context in which corporate RE procurement has played a salient role, to examine stakeholder perspectives on 24/7 CFE procurement against a backdrop of significant changes to energy policy. Our findings indicate that the market for 24/7 CFE is at a nascent stage in Australia, with various factors such as cost, complexity, perceived value, existing long-term contracts, and infrastructural bottlenecks constraining its broader adoption. While we found interest in 24/7 CFE among some sophisticated buyers and the emerging green hydrogen sector, we argue that 24/7 CFE contracting will likely play a limited role in driving decarbonisation in Australia's electricity sector
Business · Economics · Electrical engineering · Environmental economics · Environmental resource management · Industrial organization · Matching (statistics · Natural resource economics · Political science · Procurement · Public relations · Renewable energy · Stakeholder · Engineering · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Mathematics · Public Procurement and Policy · Marketing
Renewable energy certificates threaten the integrity of corporate science-based targets
Improving public understanding of climate change by supporting weathercasters
Temporal regulation of renewable supply for electrolytic hydrogen
Hourly accounting of carbon emissions from electricity consumption
Promoting novelty, rigor, and style in energy social science
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |