British wind firm sells green energy certificates

A British wind farm developer has sold rights to claim renewable energy production to a major Dutch utility, in the first international trade of 'Green Certificates'.


The deal between National Wind Power (NWP) and Energie Noord West (ENW) involved the sale of the right to claim production of 2 GigaWatt hours of electricity from renewable sources, for an undisclosed price. This is based on the Dutch Groenlabel scheme, where participating companies make a voluntary commitment to produce 3% of their electricity from renewables by 2000. ENW will use the certificates to help meet its voluntary commitment.

In the Netherlands, Green Certificates are actively traded, under the supervision of the Dutch electricity suppliers’ organisation EnergieNed, and the scheme is generally seen as successful. As NWP has not actually sold any electricity – just the right to claim production from renewables, and there is currently no equivalent of the Green Certificate system in the UK, the firm has not lost anything tangible or quantifiable through the sale. NWP says it will invest the revenue from the deal on the construction of more renewable power generation plant.

The Dutch are keen to expand their voluntary Green Certificates scheme into Europe. They are already talking to electricity companies in the UK and Denmark, and will be talking to the Germans soon.

NWP told edie it is keen to see such as scheme set up in the UK, seeing it as the most cost effective way to stimulate renewable power generation. The UK Government has talked about establishing a 10% target for renewable energy production, and a consultation paper is expected to be published this month.

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