The right time for real-time? Stakeholder perspectives on the role of temporal matching in renewable energy procurement in Australia

Amid mounting stakeholder pressure to decarbonise electricity consumption, corporate renewable electricity (RE) procurement has played a significant role in driving investment in RE capacity in the Global North. In recent years, the emergence of 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) contracting, championed by the United Nations 24/7 Carbon-free Energy Compact, and corporations such as Google and Microsoft, represents a more ambitious form of corporate RE procurement than increasingly widespread “net zero” or “100 % renewable” goals. Responding to deficiencies in current carbon accounting and RE certification regimes, proponents of 24/7 CFE argue that a more granular focus on the temporal and spatial attributes of procured renewable electricity better reflects actual emissions and helps drive investment into the right mix of technologies to make real-time RE possible. In this paper, we draw on Australia as a case study, a context in which corporate RE procurement has played a salient role, to examine stakeholder perspectives on 24/7 CFE procurement against a backdrop of significant changes to energy policy. Our findings indicate that the market for 24/7 CFE is at a nascent stage in Australia, with various factors such as cost, complexity, perceived value, existing long-term contracts, and infrastructural bottlenecks constraining its broader adoption. While we found interest in 24/7 CFE among some sophisticated buyers and the emerging green hydrogen sector, we argue that 24/7 CFE contracting will likely play a limited role in driving decarbonisation in Australia's electricity sector.