Bad news for Green electricity marketeers?Electricity from renewable sources is hard to sell…

By Dirk Van Evercooren (expressing a personal opinion

About laws and why to follow them Mostly, you can better obey the law otherwise, you might get fined or even

thrown in jail But there are some laws you just cannot

break, even if you wanted to Like the laws of physics, which make life of

green electricity marketeers hard

Electrons are electrons Electricity can be made with different

technologies and energy sources: Nuclear Coal Gas Wind Solar …

But once the electricity is produced and put on the electricity grid,…

There is no way to distinguish whether an electron was made from

renewable or fossil sources So, is selling ‘green’ electricity (= from

renewable sources) a scam then? No, there is a reliable and trustworthy

way: the Guarantee of Origin, as defined by the European Directive on Renewables

But, marketeers seem not happy still…

It’s hard to explain… to customers that renewables are used

e.g. in Iceland and that the GO is then exported, making the electricity in Iceland non-renewable

And indeed, as long as the Icelandics trust their gut-feeling more than the fuelmix (that is getting less and less green) on their bill, we have a communications problem…

But creating a physical link… between renewable sources and supply

to reassure customers will simply not work! What we need is that everyone uses and

understands the GO principle, accepting that if a country exports its GOs, the electricity there gets more “dirty”

If everybody who wants to support renewables starts buying GO-backed green electricity, the demand will go up

Now the GO-market is long meaning that there is more electricity

produced from renewable sources than there is demand for ‘green’ electricity by consumers

So promoting the use of GO-backed electricity will create a shortage, making the market short, driving the price of GOs up and creating true consumer push for more investment in renewables

The challenge is therefore for marketeers to sell GO-backed contracts to

customers without pretending that a GO-backed contract means anything else than that the electricity supplied comes from renewable sources

thus creating enough extra demand for green electricity to create more demand for GOs than there is supply,

then there will be a true consumer push for more renewable production capacity

Want to know more? The potato metaphor and 'so-called' green electricity How does it work? Buying guaranteed renewable

energy (video by ECOHZ) AIB, Association of Issuing Bodies

standardises GOs VREG Greencheck: presentation at RECS

Market Meeting 2013 Presentations from RECS MM2014

Want to know more? The potato metaphor and 'so-called' green electricity How does it work? Buying guaranteed renewable

energy (video by ECOHZ) AIB, Association of Issuing Bodies

standardises GOs VREG Greencheck: presentation at RECS

Market Meeting 2013 Presentations from RECS MM2014