CEN Standard EN16325: No short-term impact on international trade

At the last meeting of the CEN working group in mid-September 2024, the planned export restrictions in the new version of the EN16325 standard were discussed. Accordingly, it will no longer be possible to transfer guarantees of origin (GOs) to non-GO registers, such as the German Energy Agency's (dena) Biogasregister Deutschland.

 

However, these adjustments will not have any direct impact on trade in international guarantees of origin for the time being: Firstly, the formal resolution of the EN16325 standard is still pending, and secondly, there will be a transitional period that will determine by when the respective countries' registers of guarantees of origin must implement the standard - although the exact deadlines have not yet been set.

At the same time, ERGaR and others are working intensively on a long-term strategy to ensure that transfers between GO registers and non-GO registers remain possible in the future and that the market for trading international biomethane volumes is not impaired. 

For Germany, there is also the fact that the establishment and operation of the planned German gas certificate of origin register under the responsibility of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) is not expected until 2026 at the earliest. The UBA clarifies that, as before, international proofs of biogas quantities and qualities are documented in a standardized manner via dena's German Biogasregister and that there are currently no changes to this procedure.

Background CEN Standard EN16325

CEN Standard 16325 is a standard of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) that relates to guarantees of origin for energy from renewable sources. It originally focused on electricity, but is now being extended to gas, hydrogen and heating and cooling. The standard is being updated to meet the requirements of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) 2018/2001/EU. The extension of the standard is intended to cover not only renewable electricity sources, but also gaseous energy sources such as biomethane, hydrogen and thermal energy. The aim is to create a uniform and reliable system throughout Europe.