Hurray for thirty seamlessly integrated guarantee of origin domains in Europe!

Today is Europe-day. I think I speak for most of us when saying that I’m proud to be European. At unprecedented times like these, we see the value of EU and Europe beyond the costs, administration and politics that usually dominate the news. I hope in the future, we take Europe less for granted and appreciate our long history together as well as shared values like equality, freedom, and peace.

To honor Europe-day, I would like to write about an area of European cooperation which is very close to my heart: Guarantees of Origin and the Association of Issuing Bodies (AIB). In my earlier blog, I wrote about the birth and infancy of the GOs in the turn of the Millennium (link). As you can imagine, the few lines in the first directive to mention GOs (in 2001), didn’t automatically lead into a standardized technical and quality standard. No; that part was a result of two decades of hard work and European cooperation.

During 2012-2016 I had the honor to chair the then Working Group Internal Affairs of the AIB. Our working group oversaw the EECS Rules development and harmonization of rules for GOs across all AIB Members. Our job was to adjust national practices and regulatory settings under a common framework, and we agreed on mutually binding rules in example EECS quality assurance, energy measurement, disclosure, storage and biofuel declarations.

The ingredients of a catastrophe were there, with complicated matters and national interests. Yet, my experience is completely different. Our working group was effective, and everyone respected each other. We were numerous (even 20 at times) and divergent, but worked well together, always in a warm yet productive atmosphere. Sure, the matters sometimes disagreed and methodology for pumped hydro took a few years too many to resolve. But all in all, personally, I can’t think of a nicer personal and professional experience of European unanimity.

To list a few of our accomplishments during that time:

• 2012: Renewal of the Domain Protocol template into its current format. The new template is much more descriptive of how things actually work in the country, whereas the version until 2012 mostly just cited the EECS Rules. This new template was then on implemented by all member countries.
• 2013: Creation of a Hub Participant Agreement, which enabled a country to use the AIB hub without being a member. We also enlarged the scope of EECS to support add-on quality labels on GOs, Independent Criteria Schemes (ICSs).
• 2014: Introduction of the requirement for electricity disclosure into EECS Rules. This was a massive change and really enforced the reliability of EECS GOs!
• 2015: Drafting of AIB’s position paper for RED II directive. To agree on such complicated and precise positions for GOs and disclosure among 20+ members was remarkable! I still consider that to be our main accomplishment of the time and it represents a golden memory for myself.
• 2016: AIB taking on responsibility for Residual Mixes as well as birth of the professional reviewers’ group for quality assurance of the EECS Standard.

From personal experience, AIB represents European cooperation at its best. Looking back, it’s amazing how much we accomplished considering that we had to always serve and respect the interests of more than 20 countries. On this Europe-day, I hope for a renaissance of the sense of European unity and above all peace. Success stories like AIB show that it is achievable.