Certificate retirement activity can be initiated by the Account Holder by transferring Certificates into their Retirement Sub-Account from either an Active Sub-Account or from the Banked Sub-Account. Renewable Certificate retirement is possible only for sales of Unbundled Certificates to end-users where the seller does not also serve the end-users' Load.
Bundled Certificates (those associated with the sale of energy) are retired in an LSE’s EDP Sub-Account. A detailed instruction on compliance retirements can be found here.
Voluntary Retirements
An Account Holder wishing to retire a Certificate or block of Certificates will select the Certificates in the Active or Banked Sub-Account and indicate that such Certificates should be placed in the Retirement Sub-Account.
After accessing the Active or Banked Sub-Account from the Account Status Module located on the Account, select the Hyperlinked quantity to access the Certificates available for transfer.
Select the certificates to be transferred from the Active Sub-Account by selecting the checkbox in the left column.
If necessary, adjust the Transfer Quantity in the Transfer Quantity column
Review the total quantity at the top of the report to ensure the quantity to be transferred is correct.
Press Batch Transfer to initiate a transfer
Designate the Retirement radio button and select the Retirement Sub-Account from the dropdown from the Transfer Certificates Confirmation Screen to transfer the certificates into designated Retirement Sub-Account. The Retirement Sub-Account is used for voluntary retirement activity not associated with Environmental Disclosure Labels. Certificates in the Retirement Sub-Account are excluded from the Residual Mix during NYGATS Settlement, and will not appear on an Environmental Disclosure Label. When a Certificate is transferred into a Retirement Sub-Account, the Account Holder must specify the purpose for the Certificate retirement.
The Account Holder must indicate the purpose for which the Certificate is being retired by designating a Retirement Type. Indicating the reason for placing a Certificate in the Retirement Sub-Account is a mandatory field located in the Certificate transfer screen. Each reason has a set of retirement details to designate additional information about the retirement. The available reasons for Retirement Types are:
The ‘Green -e’ Retirement Reason: used only for Green-e Certified sales. Questions about the Green-e program can be directed to the Center for resource solutions. CRS can be contacted via their website at resource-solutions.org
The ‘Beneficial Ownership’ Retirement Reason: used for retirements relating to the benefit of an individual owner for a general environmental reason (i.e. company purchasing RECs to green their operation)
A Beneficial Owner field is provided to allow the account holder to provide specific information about the owner of the certificate Note: Compliance or Green-e Voluntary programs should not use the Beneficial Ownership retirement type.
The ‘Other’ Retirement Reason is available for any Voluntary Retirements the Account Holder feels does not meet the criteria of the other Retirement Options. An Additional Details field is provided to allow the account holder to report specific information about the retirement.
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Retirement Type |
Retirement Details |
Purpose |
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Used by the Account Holder for a Green-e Energy Certified Voluntary Market Sale: In order to retire Certificates to substantiate sales made in a given calendar year as “Green-e Energy certified”, the party retiring Certificates must have a contract in place with Center for Resource Solutions to make Green-e Energy certified sales in that year of sale. |
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Certificate Retirements for Green-e Voluntary Market program |
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Beneficial Ownership |
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Certificate Retirement for a third party beneficiary or environmental cause |
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Other |
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Optional Retirement Type used for retirements that do not fit into other retirement options |