how does buying renewable energy from a third party supplier work?
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In simple terms you are buying renewable energy credits from suppliers. There is no difference or way to track individual electrons (“pieces” of electricity), so when someone generates electricity from a renewable source (like solar panels or a wind farm) they can sell the electricity as well as a renewable energy credit. That credit can be bought by a company to offset dirty generation or to sell to you as a consumer. Even homeowners with rooftop solar can often sell credits each year for the amount of energy their system produced.
You’re essentially buying the amount of energy you used from a clean source. For example, if you consumed 100 kwh of energy, the clean energy supplier then replaced that 100kwh of energy in the grid using a clean source. You’re still usually using the same energy you would’ve used if you hadn’t bought it through a third party supplier meaning it could’ve come from nonrenewable sources, but the nergy you used is offset by clean and renewable energy pumped back into the grid elsewhere.
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