Could a bank who has a large mortgage portfolio use renewable energy certificates to reduce emissions associated with their customers’ home electricity emissions and claim progress against SBTs set?
Thanks for your questions and your patience as we follow up on this point. Currently RECs can only be used to cover electricity that the reporting entity (i.e. the bank) purchases. Therefore the RECs would only be able to cover the bank’s scope 2, and not their scope 3 customers electricity purchases.
For proper accounting puposes the REC should reduce but not eliminate scope 2 energy. example of generating source emissions here: Low carbon benefit by energy source - GRID