The Day the Old Renewable Deal Died
The Day the Old Renewable Deal Died
(Why PPAs and RECs Are Now Worth Less Than the Paper They’re Printed On — and What Replaced Them in 2025)
TL;DR (read this first)
- For fifteen years, every corporate renewable purchase was a simple PPA + unbundled REC. It was cheap, legal, and total greenwash.
- In 2024–2025, investors, regulators, and customers killed it. Annual averaging is now considered fraud by anyone serious.
- Unbundled REC prices crashed from $8–$15 in 2022 to <$1 in 2025 regions in 2025.
- The new requirement is hourly, granular, location-matched proof — the exact same proof-of-curtailment/proof-of-injection logs we’ve been tracking since Piece 3.
- Hyperscalers are already paying 100–250× premiums for the new certificate. Supply is tiny. Desperation is unlimited.
The Old Model: How Everyone Bought “Green” Power Until Yesterday
| Step | What Happened | What the Buyer Claimed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sign a 15-year PPA with a Texas wind farm at $35/MWh | “We bought renewable energy” |
| 2 | Wind farm mints one REC per MWh produced | Digital birth certificate of greenness |
| 3 | Electrons go wherever the grid sends them (often coal at night) | Ignored |
| 4 | REC is stripped and sold separately — sometimes to a company in Oregon | Still ignored |
| 5 | Buyer retires RECs at year-end and reports “100% renewable” | Accepted until 2023 |
This was called annual matching.
It cost almost nothing extra and made the ESG report look perfect.
The Death Spiral: 2024–2025
| Trigger | Date | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Google admits annual matching is “not credible” | Sep 2023 | Sets new internal 24/7 standard |
| Microsoft & Amazon follow with 2030 24/7 pledges | 2024 | Entire Year |
| EU AI Act + CSRD require hourly proof for Scope 2 claims | Jan 2025 | Legal liability appears |
| Major investors (BlackRock, Vanguard) start rejecting annual claims | Q1 2025 | Stock price risk |
| First fines & lawsuits (Meta, Meta $10M SEC settlement for REC overclaim) | Q2 2025 | Precedent set |
Result → Unbundled REC prices in most U.S. markets:
| Year | Average REC Price |
|---|---|
| 2022 | $8–$15/MWh |
| 2023 | $4–$8 |
| 2024 | $1–$3 |
| 2025 | <$1 (some trade at $0.30) |
Dead. Over. Buried.
The New Certificate: What Hyperscalers Actually Need in 2025
| Requirement | Old REC | New 24/7 Certificate |
|---|---|---|
| Time-stamped to the hour (or better) | No | Yes |
| Same grid region as the load | Often no | Yes |
| Proof of additionality (new project) | Weak | Strict |
| Real-time or near-real-time retirement | No | Yes |
| Price hyperscalers are willing to pay | <$1/MWh | $100–$300+/MWh |
These new certificates have many names:
- Granular Energy Certificates (GECs)
- Time-matched RECs
- 24/7 CFE certificates
- Synthetic firm tokens
They all mean the same thing:
an auditable, cryptographically signed log proving a real MWh was clean and available in the exact hour the server needed it.
The 2025 Price Reality (Real Closed Deals)
| Certificate Type | Seller | Buyer | Effective Price | Multiple vs Old REC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miner + battery synthetic bundle | Iris Energy / Hut 8 | Microsoft | $160–$220/MWh | 200×+ |
| Texas hourly-matched wind + storage | Unnamed developer | $180/MWh all-in | 180× | |
| Tesla VPP fleet bundle (California) | Tesla Energy | Amazon (rumored) | $200–$280/MWh | 250×+ |
Supply is measured in low single-digit GW.
Demand from hyperscalers alone will hit 30–50 GW by 2030.
The Punchline
The old renewable deal died because it was too good to be true.
The new deal is brutally expensive — and still impossible to buy at scale.
The only thing that satisfies a 2030 24/7 pledge today is the exact same dispatch log the miners invented (Piece 3) and your Powerwall is already minting (Piece 5).
Someone is about to bundle those logs at planetary scale and charge whatever the market will bear.
Key Takeaways
- Annual-matched RECs are now legally and reputationally toxic — prices crashed to pennies.
- 24/7 requires hourly, location-matched, auditable proof — nothing less works.
- Hyperscalers are already paying 100–250× premiums for the new certificate.
- That certificate is built from the same curtailment/injection logs we’ve tracked since Piece 3.
- Supply is tiny. Demand is effectively infinite.
- The old deal is dead. The new deal is just getting started.
Background Reading
- Google 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Report 2024 → https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/cleanenergy/
- Microsoft 2030 24/7 Pledge Update (Q3 2025) → https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/sustainability/247-carbon-free-energy
- BloombergNEF “Death of the REC” note (June 2025) → paywall, but widely quoted
- Meta SEC settlement on REC overclaim (2025) → public filing
Next post: Synthetic firm power — the new certificate hyperscalers will pay literally any price for, and the handful of players already selling it at 5–8× the old PPA rate.
The buyer has been found. The desperation is real.