Green Compute Claims: Match the Electricity Before You Trust the Label

Decentralised News · Editorial by Heath Muchena · Evidence reviewed 11 November 2026. Original DN analysis and local instrument; field testing is claimed only where expressly reported.

A compute provider can make several different promises under one green badge. It might describe the electricity purchased for a company, certificates allocated to a facility, a contractual offering sold to one customer, or an ambition for a future year. These propositions require different evidence. Before comparing providers, write down the exact sentence you want to rely on and the activity it covers.

For an agent operator, the useful question is concrete: what supports the electricity claim attached to this workload during this period? A national renewable-energy statistic does not identify that workload. A procurement agreement does not explain customer allocation by itself. A carbon offset does not describe the attributes of electricity consumed. DN treats those gaps as separate questions, so a substantial purchase cannot conceal an undefined boundary.

Claim versus evidence: what the label must connect

The EPA describes a renewable energy certificate, or REC, as the attributes associated with one megawatt-hour of renewable electricity generated and delivered to the grid. Those attributes can be tracked separately from the electricity. The certificate is therefore evidence about an attribute claim, rather than a way to follow particular electrons into a server. Source: EPA REC overview.

This table is a method for asking better questions. DN has not sampled a market of providers or calculated a greenwashing rate. An unanswered field means the claim cannot yet be assessed from the record; it does not establish that the supplier acted dishonestly.

Set the boundary before counting certificates

Start with a named service and a defined period. Identify whether the electricity figure refers to IT equipment alone or the wider facility. Then state how a customer’s share was allocated. A receipt for GPU hours is useful operational evidence, but it is not automatically a measurement of electricity attributed to those hours. If a supplier supplies an estimate, retain its method and version alongside the estimate.

Consider a customer buying inference from a platform that routes requests across several facilities. The customer might know the model and the number of completed jobs without knowing the processing region or electricity allocation. The first task is to request that missing connection. Multiplying request count by a convenient online energy estimate would introduce another model, not recover the supplier’s actual procurement record.

Keep three labels visible: measured, estimated and not supplied. They answer different questions. An estimated workload allocation can still be useful when its assumptions are explicit. Calling it measured prevents the next reviewer from seeing where uncertainty enters. Leaving an unavailable figure blank is more informative than assigning it zero.

DN’s AI Agent Energy Cost article addresses energy per accepted task. This record starts after a boundary has been chosen and asks what supports the renewable-electricity statement. Combining the two documents can improve an internal review, provided their periods and scopes actually match.

Follow ownership and retirement, not just the purchase invoice

The EPA’s credible-claims guidance connects renewable-electricity claims to ownership of the relevant attributes and their retirement. It also distinguishes electricity claims from broader environmental statements. Selling attributes from on-site generation changes what the generator can claim about that electricity. A photograph of solar panels therefore cannot substitute for the contractual record. Source: EPA credible claims.

In practical procurement, ask for a reference that connects the contract, the relevant units and the party for whom those units were retired. The public version may use an attestation or redacted statement. Your internal evidence file should explain what that statement covers and who issued it. The DN tool needs only an alias such as “retirement-record-Q3,” not a private account number or uploaded agreement.

Double counting is a separate concern from quantity. EPA guidance emphasizes the exclusive chain of attributes and the role of tracking and retirement in preventing multiple claims to the same renewable benefit. DN’s customer-allocation field applies that principle to the procurement review: identify how a provider separates claims among itself, its customers and other purchasers. Source: EPA double-counting guidance.

A large certificate total does not solve an ownership ambiguity. If the contract says a customer receives the compute service but says nothing about the environmental attributes, record the ambiguity. Ask the provider to identify the document that resolves it. Do not infer a transfer of attributes solely because the commercial invoice uses a green logo.

Annual coverage, accounting and continuous matching are different statements

The GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance distinguishes location-based and market-based electricity accounting, with quality criteria for contractual instruments. Its website also identifies a later consultation on revisions. A consultation proposal should not be described as an already final requirement. Record which published version the supplier used and whether a claimed future approach is an aspiration or the method applied to the reported period. Source: GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance.

A comparison of annual megawatt-hours answers a quantity question over that year. It does not, by arithmetic alone, describe every hour of operation. If the marketing claim is hourly, request hourly evidence. If it is annual, preserve that limitation in the wording. The same principle applies to geography: the market boundary needs a stated rule, not a convenient radius selected after seeing the result.

This is why DN does not produce a single green percentage. A quantity fraction can be exact while the underlying claim remains unresolved. Ownership, eligibility, matching and allocation are different conditions. Averaging them into a score would allow strength in one area to disguise a missing condition elsewhere.

Use the DN Renewable Electricity Claim Record

The record contains seven evidence areas: boundary, period, geography, ownership, retirement, customer allocation and claim wording. Choose “reference recorded” only when you can identify a relevant document. That selection records your statement; DN does not inspect the document. An explicit issue and an unknown both remain visible, with different labels.

The optional calculation accepts electricity in megawatt-hours, certificates in megawatt-hours and a reported matching status. If matching is unresolved, the worksheet withholds coverage. When matching is reported and the electricity denominator is positive, it compares quantities, caps coverage at 100%, and shows any shortfall or excess separately. Excess units do not create a result above 100% or establish another environmental benefit.

Constructed example: enter 120 MWh of electricity and 90 MWh of certificates, with matching reported. The conditional quantity coverage is 75%, with a 30 MWh shortfall. Those numbers demonstrate the formula only. If the retirement reference is missing, the record still shows that gap. Changing the matching selection to unresolved removes the coverage result; it does not preserve an earlier favorable answer.

Downloaded JSON includes the inputs, evidence aliases, documentation counts, unresolved questions, schema identifier and record-creation time. The creation time is not an audit date. The record has no approval outcome. A procurement team can retain successive versions to explain what evidence changed before it revised a supplier claim.

How to compare two suppliers without inventing a ranking

Give both suppliers the same proposed claim and reporting boundary. Ask each to identify the evidence supporting it. Compare the availability and relevance of that evidence before comparing headline percentages. One supplier might provide a clear company-wide annual procurement statement; another might provide a narrower customer allocation. The better fit depends on what you need to say about your own service.

Separate environmental evidence from operational fit. Availability, workload support, cost and portability still matter to a compute decision. DN’s decentralized compute comparison addresses that different decision. A procurement record should accompany an operational assessment, not silently replace it with an environmental badge.

When a provider cannot supply a requested field, record the response and its date. You may decide to narrow your public claim, retain the service without making a renewable claim, or obtain more evidence. The worksheet does not select among those business choices. It makes the unresolved premise visible to the person responsible for choosing.

Methodology and limitations

This is DN’s original evidence-record method, informed by the cited primary guidance. It deliberately measures documentation state rather than environmental performance. The seven counts partition seven areas; they are not weighted, and seven references do not constitute seven verified facts. The quantity formula is certificates divided by the electricity boundary, capped at one, with the absolute shortfall and excess shown separately.

No provider invoices, registry accounts, meters or customer contracts were inspected for this article. No claim is made about hourly matching, lifecycle emissions, additional renewable generation, avoided emissions or social impact. Electricity attribute markets use different instruments and rules; the US examples here require market-specific review before reuse elsewhere. The EPA’s market-principles material provides context for the role of those instruments.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does owning a REC mean my server physically ran on renewable electricity?

The REC represents electricity attributes. The record should state the accounting and claim boundary rather than imply it traces electrons through the grid. See the EPA REC overview linked above.

Can an offset fill a renewable-certificate shortfall?

Do not enter offsets as electricity certificates. They address a different claim. If a supplier relies on both, maintain separate quantities, methods and evidence files.

Does a complete worksheet prove a supplier is green?

No. It shows which evidence references you recorded and what remains unresolved. Its arithmetic does not validate the documents or evaluate all environmental impacts.

Why does an unknown value stay blank?

Zero would imply a known absence or measured amount. A blank preserves the fact that the evidence was not supplied and prevents a precise-looking result built on an invented input.

Corrections and change log

Send a correction with the affected claim, source URL, document version and relevant passage to press@decentralised.news. Do not send private procurement records or credentials. 11 November 2026, version 1.0: introduced the electricity-claim evidence record; consolidated the proposed greenwashing angle into this article. No supplier scores or measured market results are published.