The European Commission approved on 13 July 2011 the national green certificates scheme of Romania under case nr. SA.33134 "Green certificates for promoting electricity from renewable sources."
The decision in itself is not yet published, waiting for confidentiality clearing. In the meantime, the press release indicates some key points of the decision of the Commission not to raise objections:
- The scheme is part of the national strategy of Romania to reach its mandatory target defined in Directive 2009/28/EC;
- The scheme "creates clear incentives for an increased used of renewable energy, while containing safeguards to limit distortions of competition."
- The scheme has been deemed to be in line with the 2008 Community Guidelines on State Aid to Environmental Protection, where the redistribution of compliance fees through an Environmental Fund was probably a key element for assessing the involvement of state aids.
The Romanian scheme is characterised in the following terms by the Commission:
"Green certificates are granted to electricity producers for each MWh generated from wind, hydro, biomass, landfill gas, sewage plant treatment gas or solar. If the energy is produced in high efficiency co-generation plants, a bonus is applied. The certificates issued by the State to the producers can be sold to the energy suppliers on a specific market. The electricity suppliers have the obligation to acquire annually a certain number of green certificates. If they fail to do so they must pay a penalty. The penalties are collected by the transmission system operator and transferred to the Romanian Environmetnal Fund, which will use them for support to small individual producers of electricity from renewable sources. The beneficiaries of green certificates will be able to enter the scheme until 31 December 2016.'
Reference: State Aid Register, DG Competition website of the European Commission.
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