2022 was an exceptional year for the GO market; market prices increased from a level of 1.7 EUR/MWh in January to 3.5 EUR/MWh in the summertime and further to a high of 10.0 EUR/MWh at end of November before dropping to around 6.5 EUR/MWh until the end of the year.

The aforementioned price development can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, the 2022 summer was relatively dry, and created a supply scarcity, raising concerns amongst producers and market participants about the potential supply of GOs for the production year, given that in most countries, the disclosure of green power consumption needs to match the production from the same year.

As a result of the dry weather, the hydrological balances around Europe in general had been at a lower level than normal. Norway and Sweden – both having large storage capacity and Nordic Hydro GO being the benchmark product in the GO market - experienced low inflows into their reservoirs throughout the year until November (- 13% points compared to normal levels as max. low in September 2022). At the same time they also experienced high outflows at the end of 2021, with hydro power producers looking to cash in on the high power prices. The Southern European countries, especially Spain, France, and Italy - which have high production of hydro power and storage capacity - experienced a drought throughout the summer resulting in a 30% drop in reservoir levels.It was not until late December (Week 51) where levels returned to their historic norms.

Secondly, the energy market crisis connected to the war in Ukraine and high power prices resulted in regulatory measures to secure power supply for the winter period of 2022/2023. For instance, Norwegian hydro power producers were quasi-directed to conserve water in their reservoirs from May onwards – partially explaining the difference between hydrological balance and actual generation throughout 2022. Norwegian GO supply was further restricted by the new resource tax leading to some producers moving to re-hedge their production.

Finally, regulatory and policy changes at the European-level and national market characteristics created a complex environment for market participants, particularly generators to navigate. During autumn where the GO price increased close to 10.0 EUR/MWh, the traded market became thinner while credit lines were exhausted, and further risk management measures restricted the number of eligible counterparties to trade with.

In response to the 2022 GO market price developments, we developed a forecast model for End-Of-Year (EOY) supply for GOs issued for all renewable technologies (hydro, wind and solar, but also biomass and other renewables) for all countries connected within the EECS area [1].

In the EECS area, we estimated the GO supply in 2022 to be 694 TWh in total across all renewable technologies.

01-2023 YTD balance

Our EOY forecast model shows a 80 TWh Hydro deficit compared with 2021 figures, mostly attributable to Italy, Norway, and France[2]. Other technologies show small increases in supply, such as Solar (+14 TWh) and Wind (+12 TWh). Missing hydro power generation has been offset by increasing wind and solar generation but only in countries with stable support for renewable generators.

Based on our calculations and assuming that all renewable technologies are included, only nine of the 25 countries would increase their issuances in 2022 compared to 2021 [3]: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany [4], Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, and Serbia. Unfortunately, these countries only represented 17.1% of all issuances in 2022 - this combined with the small increases doesn’t sufficiently mitigate the large drops we expect in 2022 from 2021 top issuers.

There are no changes in the top five issuing countries in 2022 compared to 2021: Norway, France, Sweden, Italy, and Austria remain the largest issuers, as was the case in 2021 and 2020. Of note, is that their combined share continues to decrease, from 65.9% in 2020, 62.7% in 2021 to 61.3% in 2022.

01-2023 YTD balance map

Model approach, assumptions, and uncertainties

The two input datasets used for building the forecast are

. The power generation data is in hourly granularity (occasionally on a 15 min basis).

The GO issuance data is provided by AIB statistics published in the 

We assume that the latest months of reported AIB production are not complete,

 and we observe that before 2019 there was a structural change in data.

Therefore, we prune the data set before 2019 and the last 5 months of AIB reported data. This criterion was based on qualitative analysis and observation of the data. There is an opportunity in the future to calibrate the optimal number of months for pruning for GO reporting country by country.

Then, we use a standard autoregressive model to forecast generation data when it is not available (for the first version of the forecast released in December, we had to forecast the month of December). For the months where we have generation data, the method relies on the hypothesis that we can predict the GO Issued per Production month based on the power generation for each technology and country.

Data from January to July 2022 is AIB data: there might be minor adjustments from the AIB in the weeks/months to come, but 

we assume it should be considered as firm

Data from August to December 2022 is our own forecast. For these months, we provide a 95% confidence interval, illustrated by the “Low” and “High” values in the table shown above.

The major uncertainty lies in the data we use to train our model and calculate the issuances at the country and technology monthly level.

The authors would like to warmly thank Francisco Simões, Data Analyst at Greenfact, for his input and work in compiling the results and making everything up for analysis.

Overall, a GO price of up to 10.0 EUR/MWh is a solid incentive for power producers and project developers to invest in renewables, especially for those regions with lower power prices. We expect that price levels remains in a 6.0-8.0 EUR/MWh range throughout 2023.

The demand side of the EECS GO market in 2022 needs to be further analysed. Although it is not the focus of this market update, we would expect that the demand for renewable GOs will grow to 700 TWh in terms of cancelled GOs (transaction based) based upon continuing historic growth of GO demand (CAGR 2018-2022 = 6.6 %). On the contrary, during 2022, overall consumption was reduced and demand destruction was imposed in response to emergency measures enacted due to the energy market crisis.

We expect that future GO demand increases from implementing full disclosure legislation in EU member states. It has so far been applied in the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland where it enables all consumers to prove the origin of all the electricity they consume – ensuring a level playing field between renewable and non-renewable electricity sources as well as transparency and credibility of the production and consumption.[5]

Various (voluntary) corporate reporting initiatives such as RE 100, CDP, Science Based Targets (SBTi), or Climate Pledge require companies to report on their GHG emissions and decarbonisation measures from their operations and supply chains. We see the push for green power by corporate consumers as the tipping point in the supply–demand balance of the European GO market in 2023.

Other bullish factors influencing the current price level of EECS GOs are:

The enactment of European regulation on sustainable taxonomy

 which promotes the usage of GOs by energy-intensive industries being required to utilise revenues from CO2 price compensation mechanisms into green power supply arrangements.

Increasing electrification of the economy

, new electricity consumers, and the implementation of 

, namely the Delegated Act for Renewable Fuels of Non-biological Origin (RFNBO) in combination with the REPowerEU legislation and revised FF55 targets.

Supply and demand patterns usually shift by acceptance of providing new AIB members access to the EECS GO market

. Compared to previous years, the potential for new GO supply volumes is rather low as most member states of the European Union are already part of the EECS market. However, it needs to be observed the manner in which the European Union will recognise the eligibility of third countries - especially Switzerland, United Kingdom, Poland, Turkey or countries of the Energy Community.

The GO market continues to mature in terms of new marketplaces

, such as electronic brokerage/matching platforms gaining traction as well as the 

 as a mechanism to supply GOs to the market, mainly GOs receiving public support, and to serve as a reference price, increase liquidity and transparency to consumers.


[1] The EECS area refers to all countries that are connected to the European Energy Certificate System (EECS) system which is a reliable tracking system hosted by AIB - the Association of Issuing Bodies (www.aib-net.org). The EECS system defines a certificate as an electronic document which identifies the source and method of production of a unit of energy and relates to a specific purpose – such as energy source disclosure or compliance with an obligation. It is implemented in line with the requirements of the Directive 2018/2001 (RED II) regarding the setup of an electronic registry for GOs – see Art 19 (5) & (6) RED II. The full list of EECS members (countries) can be found 

[2] We also included Switzerland in our model. Switzerland is regarded as 3rd country thus needs acceptance by an intergovernmental agreement with the EU to be eligible to export GOs to the EECS market. This agreement is not in place (yet) but until further notice Switzerland unilaterally acknowledges imported GOs from EECS countries.

[3] It will be 8 countries if we exclude Hungary which didn’t issue EECS GOs in 2021.

[4] The GO supply from German based renewable installations, especially Wind and Solar, may be higher in 2022 than our model would indicate. The reasoning is that renewable generation capacity has moved outside the German FIT scheme in periods with high power prices exceeding the FIT level and thus allowing the issuance of GOs. Increasing GO supply may also apply to older assets are falling outside the FIT scheme in 2022 – after being supported for 20 years.

What full disclosure means and why it is so important?

Market Report

GO End of Year Balance 2022 Report

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