Green-e® 2025 Year in Review
Dear Green-e® Stakeholders,
This year saw continued growth across the Green-e® programs, with record volumes in Green-e® Energy in RY 2024 resulting in a 14% increase in certified sales. This year saw dozens of newly certified products, and a new Asia-focused member to the Green-e® Governance Board being just a few of the highlights. As the year winds down, we wanted to share news and updates across the Green-e® programs and preview a few things coming in 2026.
Our new verification software for the Green-e® Energy program launched as planned, and we appreciate program participants’ willingness to learn a new system. We’ve taken feedback from the first year of use and are making a few improvements, including new functionality to allow bulk upload of wholesale sales. With this in place, and everyone having more experience with the system, we expect RY 2025 verification to be even smoother. We have more improvements in mind for the next development cycle and welcome your comments to consider for 2026 verification.
CRS Listed is a way for sellers of Green-e® Energy certified products to streamline their procurement and verification, and this year we launched new features meant to make it even easier to use. A new renewal process has been rolled out, to cut down on generators’ data entry burden, and an upgraded payment system reduces processing time. We also conducted outreach to identify further functionality improvements that we will begin implementing in 2026. If you have feedback to give on CRS Listed, please reach out to forms@green-e.org.
The Green-e® Renewable Fuels program made headway on two key fronts this year. An update to the Green-e® Renewable Fuels Standard that will incorporate certification of renewable hydrogen is in the final development stages, despite U.S. Treasury pulling back on the 45(v) tax credits. A second public comment period for hydrogen language in the Green-e® Renewable Fuels Standard will open in early 2026. We would greatly appreciate feedback from you and all your interested contacts; please respond to (and circulate) the survey when it is released in January.
Also in the Green-e® Renewable Fuels program, stringent rules on biomethane from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) were released in August. These came after more than five years of stakeholder engagement and extensive scientific review with input from environmental nonprofits, industry experts, water specialists, community groups and agricultural experts. This set of unprecedented rules is intended to safeguard local communities and surrounding wildlife, while allowing for biomethane production through the responsible use of animal waste from existing qualifying CAFOs.
Along these lines, Version 4.5 of the Green-e® Renewable Energy Standard for Canada and the United States was released this month with updates to more closely align treatment of CAFOs with the Renewable Fuels program. We recently sent an announcement to all Green-e® Energy participants notifying them of this update and announcing the fee schedules effective for new products beginning on January 1, 2026 (and for 2027 invoicing for existing certified products). This update also included new fees for late invoice payment, as well as fees for new product options, including Time-Matching and verification of low-carbon energy sources. More details on these options will be released in 2026.
Green-e® Climate certification continues to be a valuable international resource to identify high quality offsets and ensure that customers are getting what they pay for. In 2024, buyers choosing Green-e® Climate certified offsets were located in 17 different countries. The number of certified offset products grew by 8%, and certified sales volumes are expected to climb even higher in the coming years as a result, after an impressive 13% increase as reported in the 2025 Green-e® Verification Report.
Green-e® Marketplace expanded its reach into new industries. Three new companies joined and began using the Green-e® logo, all of them B2B companies, highlighting the importance of renewables in Scope 3 accounting and supply chains. CRS also completed a survey on the value of renewable energy purchaser recognition programs, which identified new ways that Green-e® Marketplace can help promote the use of renewables; please reach out if you have feedback to offer on Green-e® Marketplace or purchaser recognition in general.
Renewable energy sales can now be Green-e® Energy certified in even more markets, with rulesets finalized for Peninsular Malaysia and Thailand. As new Market Appendices to the Green-e® Renewable Electricity Standard for International Certification, these rules complement the certification standards already available for Chile, Singapore and Taiwan R.O.C, and one more Market Appendix is in the works for 2026. We have updated our fees for international certification, offering discounts for participants already offering a product in the US. If you are interested in learning more, providing feedback on these markets, or inquiring about certification, please contact us at info@green-e.org. And come meet us at CRS’s Renewable Energy Markets Asia™ 2026 conference April 21-22, 2026 in Singapore to keep the conversation going.
Best wishes for the holidays, and we look forward to working with you in the new year.