3.3 Renewable energy
To what extent does the energy used by the company come from low-impact renewable resources?
About the data
This metric is part of Eticonsum's research study on the evaluation of companies in the Retail Food sector on environmental, social and ethical issues.
Eticonsum is a non-profit market research agency specialising in ESG (environment, social, governance) corporate performance applied to consumer insights.
We research and analyse the ethical market in the FMCG sector and evaluate the environmental and social performance of companies in order to help both conscious consumers to decide according to their values and companies to compete on ethical reputation.
With this metric we aim to assess companies' efforts to source energy from both purchased and self-generated renewable sources.
Renewable energy or 'green energy' generally emits fewer GHG emissions than other energy sources that supply the electricity grid.
Examples are solar photovoltaic panels, solar thermal, geothermal energy, landfill gas, low-impact hydropower and wind turbines. This description can be found on page 98 and chapter 4 of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
The complexity of the energy industry means that although the energy supplied to the grid can be green or 'brown' (i.e. from fossil fuels), the type of electricity generated from both is identical and indistinguishable. Moreover, there is no separate 'green electricity grid', which would be economically unviable.
As a result, buying green electricity does not actually mean that green electricity is tapped from the grid, it only means that the supplier added electricity from green power to the grid, which must be properly guaranteed by a Certificate of Guarantee of Origin issued by the trading company.
For this reason, it is important that the "additionality" criteria, whereby investment in new renewable assets that will reduce the generation of energy from polluting sources is made viable in the signing of long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) between the renewable developer and the consumer (the company assessed in this metric), are met
Eticonsum is a non-profit market research agency specialising in ESG (environment, social, governance) corporate performance applied to consumer insights.
We research and analyse the ethical market in the FMCG sector and evaluate the environmental and social performance of companies in order to help both conscious consumers to decide according to their values and companies to compete on ethical reputation.
With this metric we aim to assess companies' efforts to source energy from both purchased and self-generated renewable sources.
Renewable energy or 'green energy' generally emits fewer GHG emissions than other energy sources that supply the electricity grid.
Examples are solar photovoltaic panels, solar thermal, geothermal energy, landfill gas, low-impact hydropower and wind turbines. This description can be found on page 98 and chapter 4 of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
The complexity of the energy industry means that although the energy supplied to the grid can be green or 'brown' (i.e. from fossil fuels), the type of electricity generated from both is identical and indistinguishable. Moreover, there is no separate 'green electricity grid', which would be economically unviable.
As a result, buying green electricity does not actually mean that green electricity is tapped from the grid, it only means that the supplier added electricity from green power to the grid, which must be properly guaranteed by a Certificate of Guarantee of Origin issued by the trading company.
For this reason, it is important that the "additionality" criteria, whereby investment in new renewable assets that will reduce the generation of energy from polluting sources is made viable in the signing of long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) between the renewable developer and the consumer (the company assessed in this metric), are met
Formula
Answers are calculated as a weighted average. To find a weighted average of a group of numbers that have been normalized to the same 0-10 scale, you simply multiply each number by its weight (percentage) and add them up.