Amplify Your Company’s Impact with Seneca RECs

With renewable energy certificates from Seneca Environmental, your company can address emissions authentically while supporting a tribally owned business and a Native Nation.

Many of today’s businesses are setting goals to power their operations with clean energy, which lowers their energy costs and their direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, known as Scope 1 emissions. Goals often also include Scope 2 emissions: indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy. Increasingly, companies are seeking to address Scope 3 emissions — indirect emissions from their value chains — and they may also have diverse supplier goals.

Your company has a number of options for meeting these goals. However, some approaches may be simpler to implement than others, as well as more comprehensive.

For example, installing solar panels on company property can be a great choice for achieving your company’s clean energy goals. But you may be prevented from going solar by local regulations, or your facilities may not have enough space for solar to meet 100% of your energy demand. As demand grows with increased electrification and AI use, your facility’s energy consumption may outgrow your onsite production capacity.

Renewable energy certificates

When installing an adequate onsite solar energy system is not feasible, it’s common for corporations to source clean energy from renewable energy certificates (RECs).

RECs are contractual instruments used to track renewable energy production and consumption. For every megawatt-hour (MWh) of renewable electricity generated and sold to the wholesale market, an associated REC is created. Each REC serves as proof that 1 MWh of renewable energy has been produced and will be supplied to a region’s power grid.

Companies have been procuring RECs for years, because they provide a straightforward and effective way to power your operations with clean energy. In 2022, over 300,000 U.S. companies bought RECs on the voluntary market — the market segment not driven by mandates to purchase renewable energy.

But recently, RECs have come under scrutiny, because they don’t always directly support building new renewable energy projects. Ideal RECs provide additionality, meaning their purchase is a critical part of the funding for a new renewable energy project. However, those RECs can be hard to find, so it can be hard to determine the real impact of the RECs you buy.

How Seneca RECs are different  

RECs purchased from Seneca Environmental can help companies achieve their Scope 2 and Scope 3 goals, and they offer the added bonus of amplifying your impact beyond climate benefits to include tribal benefits and diverse supplier benefits. The impact is clear, because Seneca Environmental is wholly owned by the Seneca Nation — a Native Nation with a legacy of environmental stewardship, resilience, and leadership.

Supporting a tribally owned company and a Native Nation 

When you purchase RECs from Seneca Environmental, you’re directly supporting a tribally owned business and the Seneca Nation.

Because Native Nations generally do not collect taxes from their members, they have to find other ways to fund services for their members. The Seneca Nation has established a portfolio of profitable businesses that delivers long-term, sustained income and economic self-sufficiency to the Nation. These businesses, including Seneca Environmental, are the main sources of revenue to the Nation’s government and its over 8,500 enrolled members. Profits from Seneca Environmental help the Nation support cultural programs and ensure the health, safety, infrastructure needs, and education of Seneca members.

RECs purchased from Seneca Environmental support basic needs for the Nation as well as programs like these:

• Seneca language preservation. The Seneca Nation is keeping their language alive through an adult immersion program and an immersion school for children, which is helping raise a new generation of fluent Seneca language speakers.
• Professional development. In addition to professional development opportunities for Seneca high school and college students, Seneca Environmental trains and employs Seneca members.
• High-speed internet. Seneca Energy, the Tribal Utility of the Seneca Nation, brought high-speed internet to a previously underserved segment of the Seneca population and is now consulting with other Native Nations who seek to replicate this model.
• Annual powwow. This signature annual event held on the Nation’s Allegany Territory, honoring Native American veterans, welcomes the Seneca people, friends, and neighbors.