The "Voluntary Certification Platform for Zero-carbon Energy Certificates" was released to provide a trading platform for the ecological and environmental rights and interests of non-electric renewable energy

Recently, the "Voluntary Verification Platform for Zero-carbon Energy Certificates" (hereinafter referred to as the platform) was officially released to the whole society. The platform is jointly built by the Biomass Energy Industry Branch of the China Association for the Promotion of Industrial Development, the Green and Low-Carbon Technology Professional Committee of the China Energy Research Society, and the Beijing Songshan Institute of Low-Carbon Technology. It aims to establish and improve the green energy certification, consumption and evaluation mechanism, and create a diversified realization mechanism for the ecological and environmental value of renewable energy.

It is understood that the platform mainly carries out certification work for China's renewable energy non-electric utilization projects. It is mainly divided into three categories, one is green thermal energy, including biomass energy, solar energy, and geothermal energy, the other is green gas, including bio-natural gas (biogas), green hydrogen, and the third is green liquid fuel, including biofuel ethanol, biodiesel, sustainable aviation fuel, green methanol, biosynthetic fuel, electronic fuel, etc.

At present, the platform has the certification function of biomass thermal energy projects (agricultural and forestry biomass thermal power, waste incineration thermal power, biomass heating, etc.), and is expected to have the certification function of bio-natural gas (including biogas) projects by the end of the second quarter of 2024.

Before the verification, the applicant shall install real-time online data monitoring equipment according to the relevant requirements of the platform, and after a period of access, it can submit a certification application on the certification platform and submit the "Pre-verification Report/Pre-verification Information Collection Form", and after passing, the third-party verification agency entrusted by the certification platform will conduct project verification and form a verification report, and the certification platform will organize experts to review the verification report, and the platform will issue a zero-carbon energy certificate after the review is passed.

It is reported that the unit of measurement of zero-carbon energy certificate is gigajoule (GJ), and one certificate represents the ecological and environmental rights implied by 10 gigajoules of zero-carbon energy (equivalent to the energy contained in 4 tons of standard industrial steam). Certificates can be bought and sold, and entities that need to be purchased can choose listed and tradable certificates in the certificate subscription section for voluntary subscription after registering on the platform. The platform provides a subscription agreement template, the supplier and seller sign the subscription agreement and upload the agreement and other supporting materials to the platform, and the transferor (seller) applies for the transfer of the certificate to the transferee (buyer).

According to reports, the platform quantifies the ecological and environmental rights and interests of non-electric renewable energy by building a statistical system for the non-electric utilization of renewable energy, and encourages the consumption of green energy by the whole society. The release of the platform is of positive significance for promoting the development of China's renewable energy non-electricity utilization, improving China's renewable energy non-electricity utilization statistical system, and strengthening the statistical capacity of carbon emissions.