Xpansiv ramps up hourly energy matching as tech giants demand stricter rules

Renewable marketplace and infrastructure provider Xpansiv is ramping up solutions for hourly matching in energy certifications, as it sees growing demand for stricter rules of origin from tech companies and other end users.

"Some companies are seriously thinking about hourly matching of energy consumption and certificates, and generators want to be able to serve these customers," senior vice president Russell Karas told Platts.

The company, which runs a spot exchange and several other services for environmental commodities, including carbon credits and renewable energy certificates, has partnered with Granular Energy, a digital platform for managing energy portfolios, focused on building infrastructure for hourly matching of energy certificates.

The first goal of the partnership, inked in late April, is to enable energy suppliers and buyers to time-stamp energy data with registry-issued energy attribute certificates (EAC) through a single platform.

Demand for hourly matching is driven by tech companies and data centers and is also boosted by regulatory frameworks such as the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and voluntary protocols such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

"Generators are serving data centers and hyperscalers, who want optionality and flexibility for certifying energy," said Russell Karas, Senior Vice President at Xpansiv. "We need to be able to cater to these large tech companies, or you would be at a competitive disadvantage," he added.

GHG Protocol changes

The GHG Protocol board held a public consultation about a change to the scope 2 guidelines, from October 2025 to Jan. 31, 2026. One of the key proposals is that a company now certifying energy consumed in an entire year would be required to match all certificates on an hourly basis for its energy use to be considered renewable.

The revision was considered necessary because the current scope 2 guidance was released in 2015. At that time, renewable energy claims were made in annual or, at best, monthly increments, with companies buying certificates that match their energy consumption for the period.

The GHG Protocol board is expected to hold a second public consultation in 2026, according to sources, when more opinions will be heard.

Meanwhile, the EU's CBAM entered its definitive phase on Jan. 1, 2026, and under its rules, companies can reduce their carbon liability through hourly matching claims.

Bottlenecks

While some consider hourly matching the next frontier for clean energy, others believe this requirement is excessively tight and might drive consumers away from decarbonization initiatives.

"The shift toward hourly temporal matching, updates to the GHG Protocol, and navigation of US tax credits have created massive data management barriers, particularly for smaller players," a US renewable energy consultant said.

At the same time, increased energy requirements from data centers are expected to drive REC prices up over the next few months. "Data centers are aggressively procuring renewable energy, taking whatever they can get," a consultant said. "At the same time, existing renewable assets are aging and retiring with fewer new builds in voluntary markets, creating supply constraints," he added.

Platts' weekly assessment of New Jersey REC Class 1 contracts increased on May 14, with the 2025 vintage increasing 60 cents to $26.05/MWh and the 2027 vintage 45 cents to $25.75/MWh. The weekly assessment of Pennsylvania Tier 1 REC 2026 vintage rose 45 cents on the same day, to $24.25/MWh, while the 2027 vintage moved to $25.75/MWh, up by 85 cents.

Handling the generated energy and certificates on an hourly basis requires significant data processing capacity, which small companies don't have.

Other bottlenecks include fragmented workflows for issuing, trading and redeeming certificates, manual reconciliation in some cases and difficulties in exchanging data across different platforms.

One common problem mentioned by market participants is the need to navigate multiple platforms, each requiring different logins to issue, transfer and redeem certificates. With increased requirements for granularity in energy certifications, the manpower needed to complete these tasks grows exponentially.

Registries have also been adapting to hourly matching, but many expect the transition to be gradual due to its complexity.

"The problem we are asked to tackle is how to take lots of data and distill it, to take all the rows and be able to condense it," Karas said. "Whenever you have new rules, there is always going to be a learning curve, but the idea of these rules is to drive investment where more renewables are needed."