Referral of proposed amendment of the Electricity Certificate Act

The Swedish Ministry of Infrastructure has on the 18th of March 2020 circulated a memorandum regarding a proposed amendment of the Swedish Electricity Act (2011:1200) for comment.

The proposed amendment denotes a cancellation of the Electricity Certificate Act by the year 2035. The cancellation date for approval of plants in the system is proposed to be the 31st of December 2021.

The amendment is proposed to be entered into force the 1 st of January 2021.

Since the 1st of January 2012, Sweden shares electricity certificate market with Norway, which is regulated in an agreement. The agreement states that that the shared target for the generation of renewable energy within the common electricity certificate market is 28.4 TWh to the year 2020 and an additional 18 TWh to the year 2030.

According to the memorandum, the reason for the cancellation date to be set already by the end of 2021 is in part the high development rate of renewable energy, and in part that the target of 46.4 TWh will be met already before 2021. The same cancellation date shall be set for both Sweden and Norway. If estimates show that the new target of 18 new TWh of renewable electricity generation in the common electricity certificate market by 2030 will not be reached before the end of 2021, it is proposed that the cancellation date shall be moved.

The memorandum states that the fast development of wind power and the earlier-than-expected target completion means that the energy certificate system shall be cancelled by 2035, in coordination with the cancellation date set in Norway.