Green Meter

Counter greenwashing by truly becoming green

Green power from your energy supplier is usually only considered green because your supplier bought certificates somewhere in Europe. Most electricity in the Netherlands is generated in coal or gas plants, the biggest C02 emitters.

Even when you generate electricity yourself, there will always be periods that are not covered by your own yield. For example, during night or winter time. When you generate more annually than you have consumed, you are still considered green, even when that is not always the case.

Encast wants to help companies to become truly green.

The Green Metre

The Green Metre is interesting when you also purchase electricity, supply to tenants on location or make use of loading poles, in addition to producing it. With the Green Metre, Encast creates overviews every quarter-hour, hour and month for your electricity production and consumption and the ratio between production and consumption. Encast will also show what the expectation is for this ratio over the coming three days. Through this, you will be capable to align better between production and consumption and use more of your own generated electricity.

For example, on the weekend, the own electricity use is much lower on the weekend for many companies. However, solar and wind generation continues. This creates increasingly higher negative prices on the market, and you will have to pay for this yield. Unless you apply curtailment; in this case, you will halt the production. Financially this can be appealing, but of course it is also a waste. With Encast’s Green Meter, you will be better informed, and we encourage companies to think about how to better align their energy consumption over the week to their production or to think about new possibilities for the use of this electricity (loading poles, batteries, etc.).

Greening your own consumption with wind and solar

When generating your own electricity, you will receive CertiQ guarantees of Origin (GVO’s). These are tradable certificates that are granted when generating green electricity. When you generate more (for example in the Spring or Summer) than you use annually, this is considered as 100% green electricity consumption. The GVO’s of the yield, that you do not use yourself, are sold by your dealer on the market. These are often bought by foreign parties such as Amazon, Microsoft etc. and do not necessarily contribute to the greening of the Netherlands.

Encast seeks to help companies to become more green on a corporate level. For example, by using the income of your surplus solar GVO’s and buying more wind GVO’s (or vice versa). Currently, that is only possible on a monthly basis and not on the basis of the hour in which they are produced. In the Netherlands, a lot more wind electricity is produced in the Autumn and Winter months and a lot more solar in the Spring and Summer. On a corporate level, you will cover the months that you are using electricity from the grid with green electricity that is produced at that time and is not used by the producer themselves.

Further greening with a battery

Nighttime energy consumption can often be covered with a battery. Through the use of a battery, any possible unexpected peaks in the production or consumption can be covered. Covering the Winter is usually not possible with just a battery. Encast helps to create an overview of how you can optimise the use of your own green electricity with a battery.

Remove CO2

Since SDE* 2020 II, the Co2 intensity is also mentioned in the SDE. With this addition, the subsidy need per prevented ton of C02 is included. Encast seeks to help companies to become C02 neutral. Currently, this is still in the planning phase, because it will take time to reach complete C02 neutrality (the world is aiming for 2050/2060). Because far too much emission is still being produced until then, it is important to invest in techniques that remove C02 from the air. This is called Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). Within this domain, Direct Air Capture (DAC) is an important technique. Encast is a fan and client of the Swiss company Climeworks. Climeworks can remove C02 from the air for your company on the basis of a subscription.