Renewable Energy Certificates (REC)

In Canada & the U.S. EACs are called RECs, and handled by regional registries.

In Canada and most of the United States, Energy Attribute Certificates are known legally and colloquially as "Renewable Energy Certificates", or sometimes "Renewable Energy Credits".

Throughout these states and provinces, regional power distribution or management agencies are responsible for defining these standards and issuing certificates. This means that there is no single definition of a “Renewable Energy Certificate” but rather a patchwork of similar but not identical definitions based on the particular region.

A survey of all these registries, "REC Definitions and Tracking Mechanisms Used by State RPS Programs" (Jan Hamrin, 2014) identified a general set of properties/ attributes that are common to nearly all the registries' databases (reproduced below). Properties about the individual certificate are displayed in the left column and properties of the power generator ('static data') are displayed in the right column.

Certificate Data	Static Data
Certificate Type	State or Province
Tracking System ID	Country
Project Type	NERC Region
Project Name	eGrid Sub-Region
Certificate Vintage	Commenced Operation Date
Certificate Serial Numbers	Fuel Type/Energy Source
Quantity of Certificates	Nameplate Capacity
Meter Data From:	Reporting Entity Type
Meter Data To:	Reporting Entity Contact Company or Organization
Name	Utility to Which Facility is Interconnected
Certificate Creation Date	Repowered Indicator (Y/N)
Utility to which project is connected	Repowered Amount
	Repower Date (required if repowered indicator = Y)
	Qualified Facility (Y/N)

REC Registries

In this North American system, issuing, verifying, and redeeming these certificates is handled by regional agencies empowered by local power regulators or states. Because the power grid is very complex and sprawling, the regional distribution of power regulators and other state agencies in charge of power is also quite complicated and sprawling.

A few states have a single registry that is affiliated with a state-wide power reliability or system operator (e.g. Texas with ERCOT, North Carolina with NC-RETS, New York with NYSERDA, etc.), but a larger number of states share a registry with neighboring states, (e.g. the Western states with WREGIS). The table below does an admirable job of trying to make sense of the situation (again from Jan Hamrin, 2014). Note that "RPS" programs refer to "Renewable Portfolio Standards".

Registry
	Mandatory state RPS programs using the tracking systems	Voluntary renewable energy goal programs using the tracking systems	Canadian provinces using the tracking systems
ERCOT	TX
MRETS	IA, IL, MN, MT, OH, WI	ND, SD	MB, ON
MIRECS	MI
NAR	IL, KS, MO, NC, PR
NEPOOL-GIS	CT, MA, ME, NH, RI
NC-RETS	NC
NYSERDA	NY
NVTREC	NV
PJM-GATS	DC, DE, IL, MD, NJ, OH, PA	WA, WV
WREGIS	CA, CO, MT, NM, OR, WA	UT	AB, BC
None	AZ, HI	OK, IN

Jasmine's backend services, and the "Bridge", will interface with these registries to bring the certificates on-chain, and then properly retire them with the appropriate registry when the certificate is claimed and redeemed.

If you live in one of these regions, and you have a solar panel connected to the grid on your home, you can be collecting and selling your RECs! You can get help signing up from our community on our Discord!

RECs as Financial Assets

RECs are regulated as "non-finacial commodities." That's the same category as metals and agricultural commodities. See this journal article or this non-profit report for a more in-depth analysis.