We bought renewable energy certificates for our factory: does the Higg Facility Environmental Module (Higg FEM) let us subtract those units from our bill?

No. Under the Higg FEM guide you keep reporting your full electricity bill. Certificates bought on their own, without a power purchase agreement, are reported separately in megawatt hours, and nothing is added or taken off the bill. Certificates tied to a power purchase agreement are covered on the developer-owned solar page. Only certificates retired in your name count.

What a certificate is, and what the form wants

• An energy attribute certificate (EAC) is a receipt that one unit of green power was made somewhere. It is sold separately from the electricity itself, like a receipt that travels without the goods. The guide lists International Renewable Energy Certificates (I-RECs) among the examples.
• Answer Yes only if the certificates were bought and retired for the reporting year. Retired means claimed and used up, so no one else can claim them. Bought but not retired means answer No.
• Report the megawatt hours retired in the year. If 100 megawatt hours (MWh) was bought and only 75 MWh retired, enter 75.
• If a brand or group bought them for you, they must be retired under your facility's own legal name and address as on your Worldly account.
• The guide marks the question as not scored in the 2026 reporting year.

What you keep reporting

In the guide's scenario with EACs and no power purchase agreement (PPA), a facility using 100 MWh reports purchased electricity 100,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) and 40 MWh under the certificate question. It says no deduction or addition of electricity is required, and nothing should go under purchased renewables.

How the form counts it

The 2026 guide (scenario 4 note) says the system takes the purchased and retired certificates into account when it calculates emissions. Do not try to rebuild the form's electricity total by hand. The country grid figures may not be shown to users, because the paper says they are licensed from the International Energy Agency.

What to keep

• The certificate itself and the registry record that shows it was retired.
• Your electricity records that show the units the certificates were applied against.

100 MWh used, 75 MWh of certificates retired

• Purchased electricity: 100 MWh = 100,000 kWh, unchanged
• Certificate question: 75 MWh retired in the year, even if 100 MWh was bought
• Purchased renewables: leave empty

Quantities are an example based on the guide's own wording.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, so the full units on each electricity bill are on file. The certificates and the registry record come from the seller or registry, and the self-serve product does not enter anything into the Higg FEM.

• Can an open access consumer get renewable energy certificates
• Higg FEM energy and GHG data
• Developer-owned rooftop solar in Higg FEM

Sources: Cascale, Higg FEM How to Higg Guide 2026 (English), Cascale, FEM 2024 Energy and Global Warming Calculations

Last reviewed 2026-11-07. From the 2026 guide (energy question 3 and scenarios 2 to 4) and the FEM 2024 calculations paper (country factors). Re-check the current guide each cycle.