Iceland – Removing Disclosure Roadblocks

Early in 2012, Iceland had implemented the directive 2009/28/EC Article 15 for Guarantees of Origin but had no legislation for disclosure. This lack of legislation led to the Netherlands and Belgium-Flanders banning imports of GOs from Iceland, since it could not be guaranteed that the attributes of Icelandic guarantees of origin exported to mainland Europe were not double counted.

Grexel and the Ministry of Industry and Innovation decided upon a fast-learning consultation project where Grexel offered regulative engineering in making recommendations for Icelandic legislation on electricity disclosure and in training the Icelandic stakeholders.

Besides the recommendations, an important part of the project was capacity building among the Ministry and the relevant competent body, the National Energy Authority. All relevant aspects of electricity disclosure were dealt with in detail, starting from the basics of electricity tracking and moving on to more detailed aspects such as supervision and residual mix calculation. Most importantly, disclosure was explained from all relevant viewpoints: the legislator, the competent authority, the TSO and the market actors (regarding market actors the emphasis was on how electricity suppliers, in practice, should handle disclosure).

The efficient and assertive work led to the official implementation of electricity disclosure regulation in Iceland on 14.9.2012, only about 2 ½ months after the project had started!