The Brookfield Renewable – JPMorgan Chase partnership sets a high benchmark for corporate sustainability and decarbonization.

A partnership announced last fall between Brookfield Renewable and JPMorgan Chase is setting a new benchmark for corporate sustainability and decarbonization. Featuring a bold target, large scale, and optimized transparency and auditability, the deal has all the hallmarks of a world-class collaboration that sets a higher standard for others to follow.

It all started with JPMorgan Chase’s industry-leading goal to source renewable energy for 100% of its power needs globally by 2020. What followed was the joining together of two leaders in their respective sectors. Brookfield Renewable is after all a leading owner, operator and developer of renewable power in the U.S. and globally, while JPMorgan Chase is among the world’s largest financial institutions.

And then there is the scale of the transaction. Among the largest private owners of hydropower facilities in the nation, Brookfield Renewable is tapping its vast hydropower fleet in New York to provide physical renewable energy and the associated renewable energy certificates over five years to satisfy the power needs for over 500 JPMorgan Chase buildings across New York. The buildings account for 90% of the bank’s operations in the state. As its global headquarters in the financial capital of the world, JPMorgan Chase’s operations in New York make up 8% of its global consumption.

In a pioneering step that marries innovation with sustainability, Brookfield Renewable is harnessing advanced blockchain technology developed by energy, data and technology company Cleartrace to track the hydropower generation it supplies to JPMorgan Chase, megawatt-by-megawatt, in real time. By matching the instantaneous output of a facility to corresponding demand, the technology brings enhanced transparency and auditability to renewable power purchases, enabling authentication of the transaction.

Unique among renewable sources of electricity, hydropower is storable and can sustain output for extended periods. This combination of generation attributes is increasingly vital for maintaining grid reliability as the U.S. adds more intermittent wind and solar generators to the system in the nation’s pivot away from fossil power plants to mitigate the effects of climate change.

By using blockchain technology to track hydropower, the partnership in effect pairs together two disparate technologies. Blockchain is a sophisticated software technology that harnesses the latest 21st century innovations, while hydropower, among the longest proven types of renewable generation, has roots tracing back a century that have earned it the moniker as the “original” renewable resource.

In December, Cleartrace announced that Brookfield Renewable and JPMorgan Chase were among its investors. Cleartrace will use the investments to accelerate its growth and launch additional market-driven solutions to businesses that require high-speed, digital data to meet their sustainability targets.

Scale, transparency and auditability, and a strong commitment to sustainability. As the world looks to rein in planet-warming carbon emissions to tackle global warming, these are the ingredients to put us on a path to achieving this critical goal.

We are pleased to offer these and other solutions to corporations around the world that are setting increasingly ambitious targets to cut emissions and power their operations from renewable resources. We are uniquely advantaged to provide capabilities tailored to company needs based on the global and diversified nature of our portfolio.