The flexibility blind spot in carbon accounting with Killian Daly (EnergyTag)

Oct 16, 2025

Killian Daly, the Executive Director at EnergyTag, shares insights into the world of energy certificates. He reveals how traditional yearly matching allows misleading claims of renewable energy usage. The conversation highlights the need for granular (hourly) certificates to improve transparency and credibility. Killian discusses the impact of hourly matching on corporate PPA strategies and the energy market. He also explains how accurate tracking can enhance storage investments and stability, urging large electricity consumers to lead this essential shift.

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ANECDOTE

Experience At Air Liquide Revealed The Gap

Killian managed Air Liquide's global electricity portfolio and did carbon accounting for the company.
That experience exposed sharp differences between real electricity procurement and how green claims are made.

INSIGHT

Annual Matching Breaks Credibility

Current Scope 2 accounting allows annual matching so firms can claim solar power at 3am regardless of physical supply.
This temporal and geographic mismatch undermines credibility and real decarbonisation.

INSIGHT

Geographic Claims Often Lack Deliverability

Geographic matching treats large regions as one zone, letting certificates flow where power cannot physically be delivered.
Norway exports many times more green certificates than physically exportable electricity, showing the mismatch.

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Energy certificates were designed to support the growth of renewables but today they sit at the centre of a credibility problem. Many companies claim to run on 100% renewable energy, yet most certificates only match electricity consumption on a yearly basis. In reality, businesses may still rely on fossil power for much of the day while using certificates to appear green on paper.

As pressure grows for transparency and real impact, the market is shifting. Granular energy certificates that track clean electricity hour by hour aim to close the gap between claims and reality.

In this episode of Transmission, Killian Daly, Executive Director at EnergyTag joins Joe to explore how 24/7 clean power works, what it means for PPAs, storage, and energy procurement, and why companies like Google and Microsoft are already demanding hourly matching.

Key topics covered:

Why current energy certificates fail to reflect real clean energy use
What granular certificates are and how they enable 24/7 matching
How EnergyTag is defining global standards for hourly energy tracking
Why transparency is now essential to credible decarbonisation claims
What 24/7 procurement means for PPAs, storage, and system flexibility

About our guest:

Killian Daly is Executive director at EnergyTag, a global initiative developing standards for granular energy certificates to accelerate the shift to 24/7 clean electricity. An independent non-profit, advocating for policy reform and enabling the next generation of clean electricity markets. For more information on what EnergyTag do - head to their website.

About Modo Energy:

Modo Energy helps the owners, operators, builders, and financiers of battery energy storage solutions understand the market - and make the most out of their assets.

All of our interviews are available to watch or listen to on the Modo Energy site. To keep up with all of our latest updates, research, analysis, videos, conversations, data visualizations, live events, and more, follow us on LinkedIn. Check out The Energy Academy, our bite-sized video series breaking down how power markets work.