CertiQ registers 6000th production installation for sustainable electricity

13-07-2010 Last week CertiQ, the organisation that manages electricity certificates, registered its 6000th sustainable electricity production installation since it started on 1 July 2001. There are around 1000 wind farms and windmills in the Netherlands that generate sustainable electricity. Furthermore, there are 200 installations which generate electricity by means of biomass, as well as 17 small hydroelectric plants and nearly 4800 solar energy installations. 

CertiQ, which is a subsidiary of TenneT TSO B.V., has certified approx. 55 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of sustainable electricity on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs since 2001. This is enough to provide over 1.5 million households with ‘green’ electricity for 10 years. 

In the Netherlands, the origin of sustainable electricity is exclusively guaranteed by means of a production certificate (so-called ‘Guarantees of Origin’).
Production installations must be reported to CertiQ for them to be eligible for Guarantees of Origin. After the installation is registered, the regional grid operator relays production data to CertiQ. CertiQ processes the production data into unique and tradable Guarantees of Origin. 

CertiQ’s registration system guarantees that the consumer is supplied with the energy that he/she has bought, i.e. green electricity. Every MWh of green electricity supplied to end-users can then be redeemed by the supplier in the form of a Guarantee of Origin. The Office of Energy Regulation, which is the organisation charged with regulating the electricity market in the Netherlands, verifies whether suppliers adhere to this obligation.

The Guarantees of Origin system has been set out in European legislation, meaning that the certificates can be traded internationally.

Guarantees of Origin issued by CertiQ are also used by Agentschap NL (formerly SenterNovem, an agency of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs) to establish the size of the Promotion Scheme for Sustainable Energy Production (or MEP) subsidy that producers are entitled to. This subsidy is granted for electricity which has been generated by sustainable means. 
 
For more information, please go to www.certiq.nl. This website also contains CertiQ's recently published Annual Report for 2009.