How does it work?

An electricity market without physical transfer

The European Union electricity market is based essentially on dematerialised financial exchange, without physical transfer of kilowatt hours.
When a kilowatt hour is produced and supplied to the grid, it is impossible to physically trace or attribute to a given consumer.
On the other hand, it is quite possible to control the quantity of electricity supplied to the grid by a given producer and the quantity of electricity provided to a given consumer at the end of the line.
It is this kind of exchange 'flux' between a suppler and end user which is finally sold within the framework of a European energy market.

A market already opened to professionals
The European energy market (natural gas or electricity) has been open to businesses, professionals and collectivties since 1 July 2004. It will be open to individuals from 1 July 2007.

Thus, in France, since the 1 July 2004, a business can quit its traditional supplier of electricity and enter into a new contract with another supplier, though, in reality nothing changes as to the physical reality of the current consumed.
The facts is that the physical electrons that arrive at the consumer's are still produced by the same power generating plant, probably that which is closest to them (which certainly belong to the EDF, who owns 95% of the country's production capacity).
The opening of the market allows you to change your electricity supplier, to benefit for example, from better tariffs whilst continuing to benefit from physically consuming the same electricity as before.

Green Certificates to market the 'green' value of electricity

Within the context of open the market for dematerialised financial exchanges, Green Certificates has been created to separately market the �green� value of electricity produced from renewable sources and the physical value of electricity.
In the same way as it is impossible to 'physically' trace and attribute a kilowatt hour consumed, an electron produced by a hydroelectric plant or wind machines cannot be distinguished from an electron produced from fossil or nuclear fuels.

The green certificate has been created by a European certification system for renewable energy (RECS) as an attestation for the production of electricity supplied by the operator of a power generating plant using renewable energies.
The emission of Green Certificates is indexed to the production of electricity supplied to the grid by a power generating plant using renewable energy sources already approved by the RECS. It corresponds to exactly 1MWh (1,000 kilowatt hours) produced and supplied to the grid.
The European certification system thus enables the identification and proof that a certain quantity of electricity has been produced from renewable sources.

European reglementary framework for Green Certificates
Since 2003, the member states of the European Union are required to prove the origin of renewable electricity consumed (see the quantitative European goals). Green Certificates have the goal of fulfilling to this requirement and at the same time following, harmonised at a European level, the distributed production and consumption of electricity produced from renewable resources.