European wind guarantees of origin (GOs) could surpass hydropower as Europe’s main supply source of the certificates before the end of the decade, analysts said.

“Wind has the most potential for growth in Europe,” Hans Navarro, market analyst at Norwegian renewables specialist Ecohz, told Montel. “We estimate that wind power could overtake hydro in terms of GO issuance by 2029.”

“In terms of volumes, the role of hydro GOs compared with other technologies is bound to decline across all our scenarios,” said Jannik Carl, associate at Aurora Energy Research.

“This is driven mainly by an increase in generation from intermittent renewables across the EU, while the potential for additional hydropower capacity is limited.”

Carl added that across the Association of Issuing Bodies (AIB) region, wind would become the dominant supply source as the result of “huge” deployment targets across the continent. As a result, preliminary analysis by Aurora suggested the share of hydro GOs would fall from around 60% currently to 35% by 2030.

“Depending on which assumptions you make here, a share of [over] 60% [of intermittent renewables] as of the late 2020s could easily be possible,” Carl said.

Navarro reckoned that wind and solar could push hydro down to a market share of 37.5% by 2030, depending on the pace of deployment over the next two to three years.

Hydro’s market share has already fallen, from around 66% in 2019 to 52% last year, data from Ecohz showed. Over the same five-year period, wind increased its market share from 19% to 30%, while solar rose from under 4% to 10%, the data showed.

While more efficient solar panels could easily boost solar output, “the potential for new hydropower is very limited”, Navarro said.

Germany’s GO potential

By country, Germany emerged as one of several countries with significant potential to scale up its onshore and offshore wind capacity. But national regulations preventing assets tied to subsidies to issue GOs could mean the country is underrepresented on the GO market, Carl said.

“Germany took on a very ambitious plan to transition to renewable energy,” said Manuela Rodriguez, Legal Counsel, at Dutch firm CerQlar.

“Part of this plan included support schemes. Because this system is expected to say in place until 2026, we can expect that new technology in Germany will be developed under the support schemes,” she said.