Understanding the GHG Protocol’s New Scope 2 Granularity Proposal

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s proposed revisions to Scope 2 accounting introduce hourly matching within defined market boundaries, marking a potential structural shift from the long-standing annual matching framework. If implemented as drafted, the proposal could materially change how corporates report clean electricity usage and how renewable electricity procurement strategies perform.

This white paper provides a quantitative assessment of how different load profiles, renewable portfolios, and procurement instruments behave under hourly matching. Using modeled scenarios, the analysis compares the potential cost of PPAs vs unbundled EACs, examines the importance of generation type, and studies the matching performance of regional corporate aggregation.

The findings show that under hourly matching, procurement outcomes are likely to become more sensitive to load shape, market structure, and instrument design. Strategies that perform well under annual or monthly accounting may deliver materially different results when assessed hour by hour.

For sustainability, procurement, and finance teams, this paper offers a structured framework to evaluate exposure, understand tradeoffs, and identify practical pathways to improve performance without operational disruption.

Download the full analysis to assess how evolving Scope 2 expectations could intersect with your renewable electricity strategy.