EREF European Renewable Energies Federation PRESS DECLARATION 1 July 2014 Åland judgement in favor of national support schemes: The Swedish support scheme promoting green energy production in the national territory is compatible with EU law Great News for the renewable energy sector: Member States are not required to support the production of renewable energy in other EU States. This is the outcome of the European Court of Justice (EJC) judgement in the much discussed case C-573/12 “Ålands Vindkraft AB v. Energimyndigheten” which was published today. Finnish Ålands Vindkraft company applied to the Swedish authorities for electricity certificates in respect of its wind farm production on the Finnish Åland archipelago. The application was refused by the Swedish Energy Agency on the grounds that only green electricity production installations located in Sweden may be awarded. The Swedish Court of Linköping had requested a preliminary ruling by the ECJ asking if the no authorisation for outside Renewable production to benefit from the Swedish mechanism is discriminatory and violating the free movement of goods principle. And if the latter would be the case if there are grounds to declare this scheme compatible with EU law. In today’s judgment, the Court finds, first of all, that the Swedish green certificates scheme is a support scheme which falls within the scope of the Renewable Energy Directive in so far as it supports the production of green electricity. The Court notes that the directive does not require Member States which have opted for a support scheme to extend that scheme to cover green electricity produced on the territory of another Member State. Accordingly, the Swedish support scheme is compatible with the directive. Secondly, the Court notes that the support scheme at issue is capable of hindering imports of electricity from other Member States, especially green electricity and that the scheme constitutes a restriction of the free movement of goods. However, the Court finds that the restriction is justified by the public interest objective of promoting the use of renewable energy sources in order to protect the environment and combat climate change. The Court notes in particular that the support scheme is necessary in order to foster, from a long-term perspective, investments in green energy production, Sweden was legitimately able to reserve the national support scheme to the national production of green electricity. EREF President Savvas Seimanidis: This is great news for the renewable energy sector and a fair and wise decision of the European Court overall. An opening to generators outside national territories would have affected the functioning and the affordability of national support schemes! But the decision makes it crystal clear that Europe will for the sake of legal stability and security of sustainable energy system change need new and strong national binding targets for RES for 2030. No new national targets will directly weaken the ability of Member States to achieve a bigger share of production of energy from renewable sources. EREF is a federation of national renewable energy associations from EU Member States, such as wind, solar, small hydro, bio-energy, tidal, wave, and geothermal sources. EREF is striving to defend the interests of independent power, fuel and heat production from renewable sources and to promote non discriminatory access to the energy market. EREF asbl – Brussels Representative Office – Avenue Marnix 28, B-1000 Brussels, Tel.: + 32 2 204 44 00 Fax: +32 2 204 44 99 www.eref-europe.org