Ministry of Energy has posted on its website a new draft emergency ordinance amending the Law 220/2008. These measures return into the Executive’s attention nearly four months after a similar project was launched in public debate and two months later after the European Commission approved amendments to the green certificate support scheme (CV) for the production of energy from renewable sources.

These are some of the main changes envisaged in the draft of EO posted on the ministry of Energy’s website:

• setting the annual obligation to purchase a constant number of GC (green certificates), for a period of 15 years, starting from 2017, called a static amount of GC. According to estimates, at this moment this number is 14,910,140 GC (less than in the previous draft EO); that number will be revised first time in 2018 by ANRE;
• revising at every two years the static amount of GC that is taken in the market.
• until March 1 of each year ANRE establishes by order, the madatory annual quota for purchasing green certificates for the previous year based on the quantity static green certificates and final consumption of electricity from the previous year, taking into consideration that the impact on the average consumer will not pass over the 11.1 EUR / MWh level established considering the weighted average price of transactions in the centralized anonymous spot market for green certificates in the previous year
• from the entry into force of this EO bilateral agreements to be concluded on the centralized market can have a maximum validity period until July 1, 2017
• from the entry into force of this EO is prohibited any addenda in order to extend the validity of existing bilateral agreements or increase the number of green certificates traded based on them
• the extension of the deferral until December 31st 2017, for wind and micro-hydro technology and the extension of the deferral until December 31st 2024, for the solar technologies.
• GC will gain value at the time of trading and not at the time of issue, since it is not a financial instrument. This measure is designed to change the way the GC are registered in accounting, especially as through the proposed amendments, the GCs will be available for selling for a few years from issuing / reintegration. Currently, the GCs are recognized as income before being sold, which can lead to cash flow problems for the producers.
• prohibiting the repeated trading of the GC, with the exceptions for the cases with GC deficit at the producer. This measure is needed because the state aid measure introduced by Law no. 220/2008 as supplemented and amended, targets the E-SRE and not any possible speculations in the GC market.
• introducing the obligation for the provider to not invoice to the final consumers, at the time of regularization, a higher price of the GC than the average price of transactions in the centralized market of GC from the previous year. By this provision it is intended to limit the impact in the consumer’s invoice.