Corporate Renewable Energy Goals: What Does '100% Renewable' Really Mean?
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
| Author | Sofia O'Connor, James McElfish, and Lovinia Reynolds |
49 ELR 10648 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 7-2019
There is a movement among companies to use
more renewable energy and less energ y obtained
from fossil fuels. Some are pledging to go “100%
renewable,”1 with companies joining such groups as
RE10 0, 2 signing on to the Corporate Renewable Energy
Buyers’ Principle s,3 and undertak ing other initiatives. At
least 150 large c ompanies, includin g Apple, Facebook, and
Google, among others, have set goals to rely exclusively on
renewable energy.4 Many others have set goals to rely on
substantial percentages of renewable energy in portions
of their operations or in certain locations. is growing
demand is inuenced by decisions to include renewable
energy as an element of corporate social responsibility,
often together with goals to limit greenhouse gas emis-
sions, as well as by the price and availability of renewable
energy. ere are many strategies that can be used in set-
ting and ful lling renewable energy goals, w ith diering
eects on the energy environment.
In addition to setting renewable energy goals, many
companies report on how much renewable energy they cur-
rently use. is information is often conveyed in annua lly
published sustainability reports or in publicly issued state-
ments and news releases. Given that there is no legislative
requirement for companies to use renewable energy, and
that they set and meet their own goa ls, a question arises as
to what companies mean by their statements about their
renewable energy use. How should the public underst and
companies’ goals and progress?
is Article seek s to demystify the voluntary world of
corporate renewable energ y claims.5 Can dierences in
companies’ renewable energy strategies make any dier-
ence in the development and deployment of new rene w-
able energy facilities? Is fossil fuel-based generation being
displaced? Does a company that cla ims a certain renew-
able energy percentage actual ly use renewable energy in
its oper ations ?
I. Companies’ Goals for
Renewable Energy
Many companies have now joined the group RE100,
committing to become “100% renewable,”6 which
means “sourcing 100% renewable electricity th rough-
1. RE100, Companies, http://there100.org/companies (last visited May 19,
2019).
2. RE100, Home Page, http://there100.org/ (last visited May 19, 2019).
3. Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers’ Principles, About Us, https://buyer-
sprinciples.org/about-us/ (last visited May 19, 2019).
4. RE100, supra note 1.
5. e Ar ticle does not address companies’ goals to reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions, or to be “carbon-neutral.” It focuses specically on “renewable
energy” claims.
6. RE100, supra note 1.
Corporate
Renewable
Energy Goals:
What Does “100%
Renewable”
Really Mean?
by Soa O’Connor, James McElsh,
and Lovinia Reynolds
Soa O’Connor is a Sta Attorney at the Environmental
Law Institute (ELI). James McElsh is a Senior Attorney
and Director of the Sustainable Use of Land Program at
ELI. Lovinia Reynolds is a Research Associate at ELI.
Summary
ere is a movement among companies to use more
renewable energy and less energy obtained from fos-
sil fuels. Some are pledging to go “100% renewable,”
while many others have set goals to rely on substan-
tial percentages of renewable energy. In addition to
setting these goals, many companies report on how
much renewable energy they currently use, and con-
vey this information in annual sustainability reports
or in publicly issued statements and news releases. As
companies commit to relying exclusively or to a larger
extent on renewable energy, members of the public
should examine what specically a company means by
its goal, and what it means when it reports progress.
is Article seeks to demystify the voluntary world
of corporate renewable energy claims. It reviews com-
pany statements to understand the dierent strategies
companies employ and the actual eects their actions
have on the development of new renewable energy
projects and the demand for renewable electric power.
Copyright © 2019 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
7-2019 NEWS & ANALYSIS 49 ELR 10649
Companies must join RE100 at the group level, but a sub-
sidiary can join sepa rately if it consumes more than one
terawatt hour per year and has clear separate branding.13
Currently, there are 179 members in RE100.14 ese
companies come from a variety of sectors and include,
for example, companies such as Adobe, Apple, BMW
Group, Facebook, General Motors (GM), Google, Hewlett
Packard Enterprise (HPE), HP Inc., Johnson & Johnson,
Microsoft, and Walmart Inc.15 Other companies t hat are
not members of RE100 have similarly committed to rely
solely on renewa ble electricity, often in t heir operat ions
in certain countries. ese include, for example, Intel,16
Samsung,17 and Amazon’s subsidiary Amazon Web Ser-
vices (AWS).18
Other companies do not explicitly promise to rely
exclusively on renewable sou rces, but have nonetheless set
numeric goals for themselves, including Cisco (85% of
global electricity by 2022),19 Dell (50% of global electricity
by 2020),20 and IBM (55% of global electricity by 2025).21
Not all companies state renewable energy goals in percent-
ages. Lenovo, for example, has a “renewable energy goal of
achieving 30 [megawatts] MW of Lenovo owned or leased
renewable generation capacity globally by [scal year] FY
2019/20.”22
In addition to setting renewable energy goals, m any com-
panies also cla im current usage of a substantia l percentage
of renewable ener gy. For example, Apple,23 Goog le,24 HP
13. Id.
14. RE100, supra note 1.
15. Id.
16. I, C R I: 2017-2018 R 29
(2018), available at http://csrreportbuilder.intel.com/PDFles/CSR-2017_
Full-Report.pdf.
17. Samsung Electronics to Expand Use of Renewable Energy, S, June 14,
2018, https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-to-expand-
use-of-renewable-energy.
18. AWS, AWS & Sustainability, https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustain-
ability/ (last visited May 19, 2019).
19. C, 2017 C S R R 9 (2017), avail-
able at https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/assets/csr/pdf/CSR-Report-2017.pdf.
20. Dell, Renewable Energy, http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/corp-
comm/cr-earth-resource-conservation?c=us&l=en&s=corp&~ck=bt (last
visited May 19, 2019).
21. IBM Establishes Next Generation Goals Regarding Renewable Energy and
Greenhouse Gas Emissions, IBM, Jan. 14, 2019 [hereinafter IBM Establishes
Next Generation Goals], https://www.ibm.com/ibm/environment/news/
ghg_goals_2018.shtml.
22. L, A C C L: O C
T L-C E 2 (2017), available at https://
www.lenovo.com/us/en/social_responsibility/GreenPaper-Addressing-Cli-
mate-Change-at-Lenovo.pdf.
23. Press Release, Apple Inc., Apple Now Globally Powered by 100 Percent Re-
newable Energy (Apr. 9, 2018), https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/04/
apple-now-globally-powered-by-100-percent-renewable-energy/.
24. Google, 100% Renewable Is Just the Beginning, https://sustainability.google/
projects/announcement-100/ (last visited May 19, 2019).
out their enti re operations.”7 According to the RE100
criteria, all companies joining R E100 must have either
already “obtained 100% of their electricity from renew-
able sources” or have “a clear strategy with timetable to go
100%” or have committed to develop “a clear roadmap for
going 100% renewable” within 12 months of joining the
initiative.8 All member companies must have a renewable
power strategy with credible deadlines for achieving 100%
renewable energy, with the minimum requirements as fol-
lows: “100% by 2050, with interim steps of at least 30% by
2020[,] 60% by 2030[, and] 90% by 2040.”9
is means that one year from now, almost one-third
of the electricity used in each R E100 member company’s
entire operations would need to come from renewable
sources. ere are many approaches to claiming “renew-
able” energy use in operations, many of which do not
involve the physic al consumption of renewable electric-
ity at the facilities claiming the 100% use (discussed in
Par t II ).
RE100’s joining criteria dene “entire operations,” in
accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, as:
1. “[a]ll scope 2 emissions10 relating to the company
activities”;
2. “[a]ny scope 1 emissions11 relating to the generation
of electricity by the company (this excludes use of
fossil fuels for transport, t he production of heat, or
other uses not involving electricity production)”;
and
3. “[a]ll companies operating within the brand or com-
pany group, including operations that are [at least]
50% owned by the brand or company group”; fran-
chises and part-ownership facilities (ownership less
than 50%) will be asses sed on a case-by-case basis.12
7. RE100, RE100 J C 1, available at http://media.virbcdn.
com/les/45/db8335e1ef4b851c-RE100JoiningCriteria.pdf.
8. Id.
9. Id. at 2.
10. e Greenhouse Gas Protocol identies scope 2 emissions as indirect green-
house gas emissions “from the generation of purchased electricity consumed
by the company.” e guidance claries that “[s]cope 2 emissions physi-
cally occur at the facility where electricity is generated.” W R
I W B C S D,
T G G P: A C A R-
S 25, available at https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/
les/standards/ghg-protocol-revised.pdf.
11. e Greenhouse Gas Protocol identies scope 1 emissions as direct green-
house gas emissions, which “occur from sources that are owned or con-
trolled by the company, for example, emissions from combustion in owned
or controlled boilers, furnaces, vehicles, etc.; emissions from chemical pro-
duction in owned or controlled ... process equipment” but not “[d]irect
[carbon dioxide] emission from the combustion of biomass” or greenhouse
gas emissions not covered by the Kyoto Protocol. Id.
12. RE100, supra note 7, at 1-2.
Copyright © 2019 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
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