Dated November 13th the European Council has released their latest draft of the revision to the Renewable Energy Directive (REDII). RECS International has the urgent request to correct Article 19:8.
The current draft version has changed the following sentence:
Where an electricity supplier is required to prove the share or quantity of energy from renewable sources in its energy mix for the purposes of Article 3 of Directive 2009/72/EC, it shall do so by using its guarantees of origin.
to become:
Where an electricity supplier is required to prove the share or quantity of energy from renewable sources in its energy mix for the purposes of Article 3 of Directive 2009/72/EC, it may do so by using its guarantees of origin.
This change from “shall’ to “may” undermines the entire foundation of the Guarantee of Origin market and allows any instrument to be used for renewable claims. This change will result in large scale double counting and disaggregate the market for renewable electricity in Europe. As a result there will no longer be a single market for renewables in Europe but unclear national regulation and different rules on which instrument is used for renewables accounting in various member states. This weakens the instrument to the point of possible destruction of the Guarantee of Origin system.
Beyond this, changes to the auctioning mechanisms have been well received. Changes to 19.2 are currently proposed as follows:
Member States shall ensure that [ ] when guarantees of origin are issued to a producer that receives financial support from a support scheme for the same production of energy from renewable sources, the market value of the guarantee of origin is appropriately taken into account in the relevant support scheme. To that end, Member States may, inter alia, decide [ ] to issue a guarantee of origin to the producer and cancel it immediately or to issue such guarantees of origin and transfer them to the market by auctioning them. The revenues raised as a result of the auctioning shall be used to offset the costs of renewables support.
This allows member states the freedom to reduce the cost of support schemes with the Guarantee of Origin in the way that suits the member state the best.
Over the last months, RECS International in cooperation with its members and other stakeholders, has actively lobbied at the EC for favourable amendments to GO policy, in particular the rejection of a mandatory auctions of some GOs.
Members of RECS International can view a compilation of position papers regarding RED II developments in a previous news item here.
The latest draft from the EU Council can be seen here.