RECS - Renewable Energy Certificate System

www.recs.org

Product Group:

Green Power – electricity generated from renewable energy sources.

Target

•    Environmental target: Reducing CO2 emissions; National and cross border trading between EU 25 countries with electricity produced from renewable energy sources

•    Product group: Electricity produced from renewable energy sources (RES-E)

Criteria

The RECS International Association is based on a voluntary agreement of renewable energy producers, traders and suppliers in Europe. Every participating country has appointed an independent national issuing body to operate this trading system.

RECS is a non-profit-organisation registered in Brussels. RECS also act as a representative of the members to influence policy on governmental level concerning the certificate trading.

The awarding institution is the RECS board itself. The institutions that trade with RECS certificates or Guarantee of Origin (GoO) Certificates have to fulfil the RECS qualification criteria. These criteria are set up on the definitions of the Directive 77/2001/EC. No additional criteria with regard to environmental protection are added to the RECS criteria. It is necessary to register the production device (production plant) for RES-E at RECS.

As part of the RECS trading system also GoO Certificates are tradable on the AIB/RECS Internet-platform. Each GoO is based on national legislation; and each national legislation has to be in line with Directive EC 77/2001/EC.

The criteria for renewable energy sources are laid down in the aforementioned Directive.

Relevance on the market

The RECS system started in 2001. Nowadays round about 180 members are trading certificates (RECS, GoO) in more than 23 countries in Europe.

Tradable are RECS Certificate and GoO - Guarantee of Origin Certificates, based on national legislation in line with Directive 77/2001/EC (Directive on the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in the internal electricity market).