Factsheet: Meeting your sustainability commitments with renewables – RE100, Climate Active, SBTi, Green Star, NABERS

About this guide

We have developed this factsheet to help industry better understand how renewable electricity purchases are treated under five key voluntary sustainability and renewable electricity initiatives – to supporting your corporate contracting choices and stakeholder communications. 

Voluntary sustainability initiatives & renewable electricity 

As more organisations set net zero emissions targets, many look to procure renewable electricity to meet these targets. Many organisations that set targets also make commitments under voluntary climate action and renewable electricity initiatives, such as Climate Active, Green Star, NABERS, RE100 and the Science Based Targets initiative, to: 

• Demonstrate corporate sustainability leadership. 
• Drive change within organisations and establish high-quality standards for renewable electricity procurement. 
• Boost innovation and learning from the network of participants. 
• Support regulatory compliance across different jurisdictions.

To ensure organisations that make commitments under these voluntary initiatives are purchasing renewable electricity as promised, each of these initiatives has set rules defining what participants must do to demonstrate their compliance with initiative goals and requirements. This factsheet is designed to help corporate renewable electricity buyers to understand what is involved in each initiative. Important! When using this factsheet, please note that each initiative may change their requirements at any time. Readers should check with the initiatives regularly for rule changes. This factsheet is correct as of May 2024.

Target audience

This factsheet has been developed for corporate energy buyers, sellers, investors and advisors in Corporate PPAs in Australia. Feedback is welcome to develop this guide further in the future.

Contributors

This guide was prepared by the BRC-A’s Chris Briggs and Jackie McKeon. We would like to thank the following BRC-A members of our Market Advisory Panel, the Green Building Council of Australia, GreenPower and NABERs for their contributions to and review of this Factsheet.

• Baker McKenzie – Aylin Cunsolo
• NSW Ports – Pip Harley
• IAG – Caetano Mantovani
• City of Sydney – Jade Fennell
• Energetics – Anita Stadler and Jessica Antunes
• CORE Markets – Abhi Nithyanand
• SmartestEnergy – Angela Riley
• Renewable Energy Insights – Marilyne Crestias
• World Kinect – Nick Bell
• GreenPower – Anja Fuechtbauer
• NABERS REI – Zoe Baker & Lock Tennekoon
• Green Building Council of Australia – Taryn Cornell, Deejan Ferrao & Jorge Chappa

Download the Guide