WattCarbon aims to speed up decarbonization and enhance energy management by leveraging distributed energy resources (DERs). CEO McGee Young discusses transforming the environmental commodities market, highlighting DERs’ role in grid modernization and cost efficiency, and using Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) to validate DERs’ benefits.

Young explains how WattCarbon is developing systems to enable corporations to finance distributed energy projects. Young says, “We’re unlocking the environmental potential of distributed energy resources that are part of an overall effort to decarbonize our energy systems.”

How WattCarbon aims to utilize DERs to decarbonize energy systems

• Young talks about WattCarbon’s mission to transform the environmental commodities market for distributed clean energy. Young highlights how WattCarbon aims to utilize DERs to decarbonize energy systems.
• Young discusses WattCarbon’s collaboration with LF Energy, focusing on open source data and methodologies for evaluating the impact of DERs. Young also covers how DERs can optimize energy management and reduce costs.

How are DERs helping to manage energy use and reduce costs

• Young outlines how the growing use of DERs, such as batteries and EV chargers, is essential as the grid shifts from a one-way to a more interactive two-way system.
• Young emphasizes the urgent need to accelerate decarbonization to address environmental damage from current energy systems, highlighting the crucial role of distributed energy resources in this transition.
• A robust system of record needs to be created to track and verify the contributions of DERs to environmental goals. This system is crucial for allowing DERs to compete in environmental markets.
• Young explains that WattCarbon’s approach involves detailed, granular tracking of the environmental impacts of DERs to ensure precise and meaningful participation in environmental programs. Young also emphasizes the importance of community investment.

How WattCarbon’s WEATS platform validates DER environmental benefits with EACs

• WattCarbon Energy Attribute Tracking System (WEATS) platform which enables developers of DERs to create EACs. Young explains how these certificates validate the environmental benefits of their projects.
• Young details use cases for WEATS, such as shifting clean energy with batteries and replacing fossil fuels with heat pumps. Young emphasizes how data from inverters and chargers helps verify the environmental benefits of these technologies.
• Young describes EACs as a standardized way to track and verify clean energy exchanges and their environmental benefits.

The challenges and solutions of transitioning to clean energy

• Young highlights that the high upfront costs associated with transitioning to clean energy make it financially challenging for many individuals and organizations to participate.
• Young discusses how WattCarbon is developing systems that allow corporations to finance distributed energy projects, thereby reducing the financial burden on end customers while also enabling these corporations to claim environmental credits.
• Young identifies key stakeholders in the environmental commodities ecosystem, including project developers who install and manage distributed energy resources, utilities that benefit from these resources, and end customers.
• WattCarbon is developing a marketplace to tackle key challenges: enhancing data infrastructure for tracking, strengthening the marketplace for distributed clean energy, and closing the financing gap to improve accessibility.

Guest: McGee Young (LinkedIn)
Organizations: WattCarbon | LF Energy (Twitter)
Show: State of Energy 

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.