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love this. what are the biggest frustrations you're currently seeing w/ REC markets? i was surprised at how hard it is to compare REC prices. Like, am I suppo

love this. what are the biggest frustrations you're currently seeing w/ REC markets? i was surprised at how hard it is to compare REC prices. Like, am I supposed to request a quote from each of these? https://www.green-e.org/certified-resources https://www.green-e.org/certified-resources It'd be great to snap a pic of my utility bill and get back the best REC pricing... :)

IpV8 9y ago
A big problem in the REC markets is lack of price transparency. I worked for a startup a while back building a trading platform to try to get major players together at a regular interval to agree upon pricing that could then be executed upon and published publicly. The idea didn't pan out; despite having a lot of the biggest traders in the game on board, there just wasn't enough trading to make a company viable. I believe that this is due in part by two things. 1 - the large variance in regulations. You can't just trade a REC for a REC. If there was national consensus then it would open up much more liquidity. 2 - most RECs are pre bought/sold as a means of project finance. A company building a wind farm will pre sell years in advance to help fund the hardware. On the other side utilities will pre buy all the credits to cover their needs. There is relatively low day trading, making a technology solution difficult. Currently most large scale traders pick up the phone and call brokers like the good old days of the stock market. So to answer your question, yes you need to request a quote from each. There are also bloomberg streams for pricing and some brokering companies publish indexes that they believe reflect the current pricing.
- nathantone 9y ago
  ugh! so if I got a quote w/ my utility bill from all those sellers, then got another quote from each next week, or got another quote for a diff utility bill, would the prices returned by each seller vary significantly?
  - IpV8 9y ago
    Probably not widely. They likely have some sort of source of information that they use like for example: 'the current published price on bloomberg by Intercontinental Exchange'. Though this may not be the exact market price of the REC at that particular instant, it would be within a couple cents or so. Also with such a small market the amount you could get per REC changes significantly based on volume. Anyways, you as a customer with a utility bill probably have 0 say in what you sell your RECs for. You already would have signed away those rights when you signed the lease on your solar panels. (at least that's how it all works to the best of my knowledge)

IpV8 9y ago

A big problem in the REC markets is lack of price transparency. I worked for a startup a while back building a trading platform to try to get major players together at a regular interval to agree upon pricing that could then be executed upon and published publicly. The idea didn't pan out; despite having a lot of the biggest traders in the game on board, there just wasn't enough trading to make a company viable. I believe that this is due in part by two things. 1 - the large variance in regulations. You can't just trade a REC for a REC. If there was national consensus then it would open up much more liquidity. 2 - most RECs are pre bought/sold as a means of project finance. A company building a wind farm will pre sell years in advance to help fund the hardware. On the other side utilities will pre buy all the credits to cover their needs. There is relatively low day trading, making a technology solution difficult. Currently most large scale traders pick up the phone and call brokers like the good old days of the stock market. So to answer your question, yes you need to request a quote from each. There are also bloomberg streams for pricing and some brokering companies publish indexes that they believe reflect the current pricing.

nathantone 9y ago
ugh! so if I got a quote w/ my utility bill from all those sellers, then got another quote from each next week, or got another quote for a diff utility bill, would the prices returned by each seller vary significantly?
- IpV8 9y ago
  Probably not widely. They likely have some sort of source of information that they use like for example: 'the current published price on bloomberg by Intercontinental Exchange'. Though this may not be the exact market price of the REC at that particular instant, it would be within a couple cents or so. Also with such a small market the amount you could get per REC changes significantly based on volume. Anyways, you as a customer with a utility bill probably have 0 say in what you sell your RECs for. You already would have signed away those rights when you signed the lease on your solar panels. (at least that's how it all works to the best of my knowledge)