The Energy Community plans to launch an electronic system for guarantees of origin (GOs) in the Western Balkans in June 2022, its spokesperson told Montel Energetika.NET.

That is when the renewables certificates project, which the Energy Community began to implement today, will end, and national GO registries in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Ukraine will go live, said Barbora Poyner, senior communication officer at the Energy Community Secretariat.

The Energy Community will be supported by Gexel, which is a subsidiary of the EEX exchange and a leading provider of registry services for GOs. It will help put in place an electronic system to manage the issuance, transfer and cancellation of GOs in the region in line with EU rules and principles.

The system will enable each contracting party to have its own national register, while also being able to trade GOs regionally, said the Secretariat in a press release. Serbia has already established its own electronic system for GOs.

GOs are electronic documents which prove to final consumers that a specific quantity of electricity was produced from renewable energy sources.

Artur Lorkowski, the Secretariat's director, considers them “a real game changer by driving new renewables investment.” He added that this system “will give the contracting parties a head start in implementing the Renewable Energy Directive, one of the key elements of the newly adopted Clean Energy Package.”

GOs are also seen as a precondition for enabling the use of corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) in the Western Balkans.