The retroactive measure ought to have an effect on PV programs totaling greater than 500 MW. The Flemish authorities claims the cancellation of the inexperienced certificates might assist save as much as €1.2 million, whereas the native renewable power affiliation ODE Vlaanderen is able to query the authorized underpinning of the draft legislation.
The power minister of the Belgian macro-region of Flanders, Zuhal Demir, has lately revealed a plan to cease granting inexperienced certificates to some renewable power installations deployed between 2009 and 2013 beneath the area’s inexperienced certificates scheme.
Demir’s proposal is meant at saving round €1.2 billion and may have an effect on roughly 1,200 PV system homeowners, which might not obtain the inexperienced certificates they need to be awarded for the subsequent 10 years. “These are massive installations that reached their payback time a very long time in the past,” the minister stated in a press release. “The European guidelines on state assist communicate in our favor, and there’s no such factor without any consideration to over-subsidization.”
“The draft legislation proposes that each one emission of Inexperienced Certificates (GC) to bigger PV-systems put in between 2009 and 2013 could be stopped ranging from January 1, 2024,” Dirk Van Evercooren, managing director of Flemish renewable power affiliation Organisatie voor Duurzame Energie (ODE) Vlaanderen, informed pv journal. “This may apply to all PV programs operated by corporations, native authorities, organizations, and cooperatives that exceed the so-called ‘de-minimis’ threshold outlined by the European state assist laws, which suggests all installations that acquired €200.000 in subsidies over the earlier three years.
In keeping with Van Evercooren, it is vitally onerous to estimate the impression precisely, each by way of which installations might be impacted and their dimension, in addition to the variety of homeowners which may undergo a reduce of their cashflows. “About 500 MW of capability could possibly be affected, though this would possibly nonetheless be an optimistic determine,” he stated. “The minister herself spoke about 200 corporations that may be impacted, however that is almost certainly an underestimation.”
The claims of the Flemish authorities are primarily based on a report by UK consultancy agency Oxera, which reportedly confirmed the excessive degree of subsidization granted to those tasks. “The examine appears to be primarily based on theoretical fashions solely, without any consideration for the actual power market,” Van Evercooren added.
In keeping with him, the examine takes into consideration unrealistically excessive ranges of self-consumption, which might be essentially the most profitable possibility, though self-consumption stays nonetheless very restricted among the many focused Flemish PV system homeowners. Moreover, the examine assumes unrealistic value ranges. “The report overestimates the revenues of the affected tasks by an element of three,” Van Evercooren went on to say. “Furthermore, about half of the installations probably affected by the proposed measure had been deployed via leasing. This enterprise mannequin was wanted within the years by which the inexperienced certificates scheme was in place, as PV was not a really well-known expertise and plenty of industrial rooftop homeowners had been reluctant to take a position themselves. The examine neglects this funding mannequin fully.”
“Our detailed evaluation of over 1,200 installations probably affected by this measure exhibits that it’ll result in bankruptcies of just about all of the particular goal autos (SPVs) proudly owning the leased installations and normally, this motion would have a adverse impression additionally on municipalities, cooperatives and public entities,” Van Evercooren said. “The general stability of execs and cons could be very adverse for the Flemish financial system, in our opinion.”
The affiliation ODE Vlaanderen can also be questioning the authorized underpinning of the draft legislation and stated the European Fee’s Directorate-Basic for Competitors might affirm that the brand new pointers on state assist don’t drive the Flemish authorities to intervene in ongoing GC-schemes, solely to keep away from overcompensation for future investments.
Underneath Flanders’ inexperienced certificates scheme, PV system homeowners had been entitled to obtain and promote inexperienced certificates with a validity of 20 years. Round 1 GW of business and industrial PV programs and 50o MW of residential photo voltaic arrays not exceeding 10 kW in dimension had been put in beneath the scheme between 2009 and 2013.
