Registered agent (STCs)

Written and checked by the Energy Merchants desk · Reviewed 2 October 2026

A registered agent is a business that has registered with the Clean Energy Regulator to create STCs on behalf of system owners. Registration gives the agent a registry account, so it can lodge claims, hold certificates and transfer them to a buyer.

Owners can create their own STCs, but almost nobody does. They sign an assignment to an agent, usually through the installer, and the agent does the registry work.

In practice

For an installer, the choice of registered agent is the choice of who handles the claim after the job. The agent receives your assignment forms, photos and system data, lodges the claim, and pays you for the certificates. If the agent is slow, you wait. If it is suspended, your pipeline stops.

That is not hypothetical. The former Greenbot platform was permanently suspended as a registered agent in 2024, and its clients moved mainly to Formbay and One Stop Warehouse. Installers with unlodged claims had to reorganise at short notice. When you pick a partner, ask who holds the registry account, how long they have been trading, and what happens to your unlodged claims if something goes wrong. Our certificate trader checklist lists the questions.

Common confusion

The words aggregator, trader and registered agent overlap but mean different things.

• Registered agent: a legal status with the regulator that permits lodging and holding certificates.
• Trader: a business that buys certificates and sells them on, typically to liable entities. A trader may also be a registered agent.
• Aggregator: a loose commercial term for a business that pools certificates from many installers, sometimes with software or admin services, and sometimes without being the buyer.

A company can be all three at once. What matters to you is who holds the claim, who pays you, and on what terms.

REC Traders, the trader behind Energy Merchants, has traded since 2004. For how this works in practice, see how it works and the certificate trading glossary.