Nuclear fallout: first French atomic GOs are on the market

For the first time, EDF released 0.15TWh of nuclear guarantees of origin (GOs) in February 2024. This represents <0.1% of the total supply of nuclear GOs on the market, which reached about 120 TWh in 2023. Currently, nuclear GOs are trading at around EUR 0.03/MWh (Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP) for CY-1), well below the RES-E GOs which were last reported trading in a range of EUR2/MWh for future vintages on 4 June 2024.

Since the classification of investments in nuclear energy as sustainable under the EU Taxonomy in 2020, demand for nuclear GOs has increased by around 50% to almost 80 TWh. Some buyers opted for cheap nuclear certificates when renewable GO prices climbed to EUR 10/MWh at the end of 2022.

Despite their environmental benefits in terms of low life-cycle emissions, the market for nuclear GOs currently remains constrained by general anti-nuclear sentiment and preference for renewable energy. However, there is room for higher nuclear GO demand to the extent that end-users are concerned with GHG accounting rather than the renewable attributes of electricity.