These are certificates that a company purchases to show it is buying renewable energy-generated electricity to match a portion of its electricity consumption – the catch, though, is that the renewable energy in question doesn’t need to be consumed by a company’s facilities. Rather, the site of production can be anywhere from one town over to an ocean away.
If I understand this correctly, a tech firm with a data centre in Melbourne could buy RECs from Helsinki, pocket the certificate, and on-sell the energy to someone who needed it in Helsinki without the certificate?