Cross-Border Electricity Trade

Cross-Border Electricity Trade

•• Immediate clarity, credibility, and engagement

Facilitating Credible Implementation and Disclosure of Cross-Border Electricity Trade (CBET)

A structured, voluntary approach that enables governments, industry, and reporting frameworks to implement and disclose high‑integrity cross‑border electricity trade in alignment with existing global guidance.

Cross-border electricity trade (CBET) is critical for the public and private sector as CBET plays a central and growing role in energy security, grid stability, and economic decarbonization.  Governments need to achieve national energy sector targets to fulfill their international energy commitments; independent power producers (IPPs) need assurance that export transactions and associated environmental attribute certificates (EACs) can be reported globally by end users; and electricity buyers require CBET to power operations with low carbon electricity at affordable rates. As such, international recognition of CBET transactions plays a central role in project financing, access to clean and affordable electricity, and for achieving (inter)national energy sector targets. However, disclosure barriers to CBET remain largely unaddressed.

Existing reporting frameworks, including accounting standards and clean electricity procurement initiatives, address CBET from different perspectives. While reporting frameworks share broadly aligned views on what constitutes permissible and high‑integrity CBET transactions, they do not yet provide a common, operational pathway for governments and industry stakeholders to demonstrate real-world alignment with quality principles. This means that while countries and projects may be aligned with best practices, such as deliverability, aligned EAC systems, and being transacted between willing economies, recognition and disclosure pathways are largely undefined.

The I-TRACK Foundation advances a solution to these challenges by:

  1. providing a structured approach for countries, companies, and reporting frameworks to align on CBET disclosure and recognition,
  2. explaining existing challenges and how the implementation approach addresses them, and
  3. providing core CBET implementation documents. (currently under final review).

1. Governments and Industry Stakeholders

For entities that find this approach suitable for their operations, the information on this webpage can be referenced in replies to reporting framework surveys as part of your organizations’ feedback. To signal support, entities may consider referencing the weblink to this page in their survey replies and indicating support for the I-TRACK Foundation’s approach, requesting that the relevant reporting framework participate in reviewing CBET documentation and reference the guidance materials.
Contact Us

2. Reporting Frameworks

The I-TRACK Foundation seeks review and feedback of the CBET documentation from reporting frameworks. If your organization has not received them yet, then they can be requested by contacting the I-TRACK Foundation at secretariat@trackingstandard.org and asiasupport@trackingstandard.org
Contact Us

The target outcome is for guidance documents (such as technical criteria or accounting standards) to explicitly state that “Entities conducting procurement between interconnected market boundaries and wishing to demonstrate compliance with the deliverability or cross-border guidance contained herein may use a qualified CBET Label or Audit Report to demonstrate alignment with the associated implementation requirements”. This reference will enhance clarity for the market on how to show alignment with global standards as they relate to deliverability and wider cross-border guidance.

This approach is designed to support credible CBET disclosure in alignment with existing guidance, and without imposing review burdens on reporting frameworks. The remainder of this webpage provides further details.

Ecosystem Needs for Implementing CBET Disclosure

Principles need to be demonstrable. Existing guidance documents emphasize core principles such as physical deliverability, avoidance of double counting, appropriate residual mix treatment, and in cases, temporal matching. However, these principles are typically articulated at a high level. While they provide useful concepts, they do not define how to show alignment. Governments and organisations lack clear implementation parameters for how these principles should be applied and demonstrated in practice. The result is conceptual guideposts without actionable rules.

Public institutions and industry stakeholders require ways of expressing alignment. CBET requires the engagement of public institutions and industry stakeholders, many of which are already aligned with best practices. However, there is no mechanism for countries to explicitly demonstrate alignment and request international recognition of CBET between markets. In the absence of such a mechanism, reporting framework guidance threatens to restrict sovereign choice on CBET, without providing a path forward.

Reporting frameworks cannot be saddled with the burden of review. It must be recognized that reporting frameworks may lack the resource needed to validate the growing number of country requests for CBET recognition. As such, any approach to demonstrating national alignment should not require case-by-case review by reporting frameworks that do not wish to conduct such review. To address this, the approach for confirming that two countries are aligned with each other and with best practices should be implementable by third parties. At the same time, it is important to note that different reporting frameworks have similar but not identical requirements for CBET. General alignment should be made possible through reference to uniform external guidance, while additional requirements (unique to different frameworks) must be simple to add on a case-by-case basis for review by third parties.

Credible disclosure depends on transaction‑level information. Without consistent ways of associating CBET data with individual electricity and EAC transactions, demonstration of CBET eligibility will remain a challenge. Ambiguity concerning whether an EAC is CBET eligible creates negative impacts on project financing (CBET alignment risks are currently flagged by banks) and on long-term offtake agreements (buyers may be reluctant to sign PPAs unless they know they can report procurement against them). To address this, it is necessary to have clear ways of showing that an asset and EAC meet requirements.

A Structured Approach to CBET Implementation and Recognition

The I‑TRACK Foundation, in collaboration with industry leaders, national governments, non-profits, and grid operators, has developed a modular document structure to address these needs. Together, the documents (i) define CBET implementation rules that reference global best practices, (ii) provide a template for countries to demonstrate alignment with the rules and with specific trade partners, and (iii) a method for aggregating data such that CBET-eligibility can be clearly linked to individual EACs. The structure is designed to be voluntary, transparent, and aligned with current guidance.

The CBET Standard and Best Practices translates widely recognized CBET principles into a set of clear requirements. It defines what information and proof is needed for a CBET transaction to be aligned with the global best practices of (i) electron deliverability, (ii) avoidance of double counting, and (iii) residual mix harmonization. The purpose of the CBET Standard and Best Practices is not to reinterpret or replace existing guidance, but to provide a clear set of rules on how to implement in line with existing best practices.

The CBET Standard and Best Practices has been developed through extensive multi‑stakeholder engagement, including more than 60 electricity buyers, IPPs, utilities, and representatives of national governments. Feedback from these stakeholders has been incorporated into the current draft, which is now ready for review by reporting frameworks (several of which are currently conducting feedback).

The template National CBET Framework is designed to support countries in demonstrating how they are aligned with core CBET guidance and with trade partners. The document is intended for use by public institutions and utilities and can be populated bilaterally to show alignment between trade partners. National CBET Frameworks provide a structured way for governments to document interconnection topography, alignment on EAC systems to avoid double counting, and residual mix harmonization. Particularly in contexts where countries do not share energy sector regulation but do have interconnected grids, the National CBET Frameworks are designed to show such alignment in a transparent and uniform structure.

Given that the National CBET Frameworks make explicit reference to the rules defined by the CBET Standard and Best Practices, alignment can be independently validated by third parties. This makes it possible for public institutions and industry stakeholders to (i) express how their market contexts are aligned with global guidance and with trade partners, and (ii) to receive validation of alignment by third parties, without creating review burdens for reporting frameworks. As with the CBET Standard, stakeholder feedback has been incorporated into current drafts, and review by the reporting framework is now requested.

Where CBET is implemented in line with international best practices and conducted between countries with aligned National CBET Frameworks, associated EACs will need to be clearly identified as such. The data coordination and label protocols have been developed to make such tagging possible. Entities engaged in CBET transactions between aligned markets have two options for demonstrating alignment with global guidance. They may either engage an independent auditor to review all relevant materials and provide an assurance statement validating that the batch of EACs meets the requirements set out in the CBET Standard, or they may coordinate with a Label Authority capable of tagging the device and EACs as “CBET-Eligible”.

In both cases, parties to a CBET transaction will need to demonstrate that their transaction is taking place between markets with aligned CBET Frameworks, and that the specified electricity production was physically deliverable to the recipient during a defined period. Provided that reporting frameworks recognize such labels and audit reports as valid proof structures, disclosing entities may confidently engage in CBET transactions between markets, and use corresponding CBET-EACs for disclosure.

How CBET Disclosure Will Work in Practice

  1. The CBET Standard and Best Practices provides actionable rules for implementation, aligned with guidance and requirements articulated by reporting frameworks. All stakeholders may reference the CBET Standard and Best Practices as a guiding set of rules.
  2. When two interconnected markets wish to facilitate recognized CBET, they will populate and harmonize National CBET Frameworks to demonstrate that transactions between the countries are aligned on core principles.
  3. At the project level, where electricity and EACs flow from one market to an interconnected grid, industry stakeholders may engage a Label Authority or auditor to record deliverability proofs and confirm that a specific transaction meets CBET requirements. The result of this process will be EACs either clearly labeled as CBET-eligible, or EACs accompanied by an audit report indicating the same.
  4. Provided that the reporting framework to which the disclosing entity seeks to make the claim approves of this approach, CBET transactions between aligned markets and labeled as such will be deemed aligned with best practices.

Relationship with Existing Structures and Request for Review

The above approach has been designed to support the demonstration of alignment with existing accounting standards and renewable electricity procurement criteria defined by entities and documentation such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol for Scope 2 Accounting, the RE100 Technical Criteria, and the Science Based Targets’ Corporate Net Zero Standard. For the approach to be fully effective for the market, explicit reference to it in relevant documentation would help clarify the position of reporting frameworks and enable governments and industry stakeholders to proceed with structuring national implementation guidance and commercial transactions.

The I‑TRACK Foundation has shared draft versions of the CBET Standard and Best Practices and the National CBET Framework templates with a wide range of stakeholders and has incorporated feedback into the current drafts. The I‑TRACK Foundation welcomes written feedback from reporting frameworks, standard‑setting bodies, and other relevant stakeholders. Copies of the draft documents can be made available upon request. Pending feedback from such stakeholders, the I-TRACK Foundation anticipates publishing the full suite of documents in Q1 2026 to facilitate pilots on national framework alignment and transactions in 2026.