  We formulate a procedure to obtain a gauge-invariant tunneling rate at zero
temperature using the recently developed tunneling potential approach. This
procedure relies on a consistent power counting in gauge coupling and a
derivative expansion. The tunneling potential approach, while numerically more
efficient than the standard bounce solution method, inherits the
gauge-dependence of the latter when naively implemented. Using the Abelian
Higgs model, we show how to obtain a tunneling rate whose residual
gauge-dependence arises solely from the polynomial approximations adopted in
the tunneling potential computation.
