Following the exemption of green electricity from ecotax earlier this year, the price differential between grey and green power was brought down to some NLG 0.025/kWh. This difference is set to be further reduced by a proposed hike in ecotax.
In the medium term, sales of green electricity look likely to be further boosted by legislation which will oblige specified categories of consumer to buy 10% of their annual electricity requirements from renewable resources by 2020. The Dutch Energy Research Centre (ECN) in North Holland recently took an advance step to comply with this legislation by signing a 15 year contract with utility NUON to buy 375,000 kWh green power annually. Some 5% of the 10 million kWh ECN uses each year is currently generated by renewables. The NUON contract will increase that share to 9%.
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