White certificates

In environmental policy, white certificates are documents certifying that a certain reduction of energy consumption has been attained.

In most applications, the white certificates are tradable and combined with an obligation to achieve a certain target of energy savings.

Sterling Planet helped develop Connecticut's Energy Efficiency Standard and is presently the only company actively involved in this space.

The white certificate concept is an offshoot of the more mature renewable energy credit or "green tag" trading.

One issue arising is how to avoid allowing customers to "double dip" in white tag and other incentive programs for energy efficiency, such as ISO New England's forward capacity market and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative3.

When determining the extent of energy saving, the energy use is compared against a baseline, which is an estimate of the energy use in the absence of any attempt at saving energy. This approach was developed over 20 years ago and is the basis for measurement and verification (M&V) of energy savings. It is fully described in the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) and maintained by the Efficiency Valuation Organization (EVO). A succinct version of the IMPVP is found in the IPMVP Generally Accepted Principles published by EVO in October 2018