Technology is advancing at blinding speed. There is now cyber money, called “bit coin”, There is “artificial intelligence” that allows a robot to replicate itself. Now there are investments vehicles called RECs, Renewable Energy Certificates, based on the ethereal value of renewable energy, sort of like the so-called exotic investment vehicle Wall Street bankers created that nearly crashed our economy in 2008.
RECs are certainly more legitimate than those exotic brainstorms of greedy Wall Street Bankers.
What are Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs)? And specifically what are SREC’s?
SRECs are not electrical energy. They are marketable certificates, representing the clean, renewable nature of a solar facility's electrical production that has been severed from the electricity for the very purpose of being sold separately.”
RECs represent and convey the renewable, environmental and/or social attributes of renewable electricity generation to the owner, along with the legal right to claim usage of that renewable electric.“ SRECs simply reflect the clean, renewable aspect of electricity produced by a solar facility.”
U.S. case law supports the legal basis of RECs as attributes and property rights. For example, the Superior Court of New Jersey has recognized that “One Renewable Energy Certificate represents the environmental benefits or attributes of one megawatt-hour of generated renewable energy,” and RECs are considered “property.”
The U.S. EPA and the U.S. DOE have recognized RECs as “property rights to the environmental benefits from generating electricity from renewable energy sources.”
The Environmental Markets Association (EMA) recognizes RECs as “the property rights to the environmental benefits from generating electricity from renewable energy sources” that “can be sold and traded and the owner of the REC can legally claim to have purchased renewable energy.”
REC’s can be purchased on line, of course, at companies such as terrapas.
(Special thanks to Don and Gale Smallidge for pointing to the concept of RECs)