GO market bull? Green Claims Directive moves through the legislative process

The Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU has finalised its negotiating position (general approach), and subsequently voted in favour of the text at the environment council meeting on 17 June 2024. This will serve as a basis for interinstitutional negotiations (trilogues) with the European Parliament in autumn, projecting the adoption timeline for late 2024 or early 2025, pending the trilogue outcome.

The positions on the text of the two institutions vary when it comes to implementation timelines and the scope of the companies covered. However, their approach is aligned with the application of the Environmental Footprint (EF) methods, which steer companies towards precision-modelled electricity use, making guarantees of origin (GOs) an integral tool of this life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The institutional alignment also suggests that we will see stricter selection criteria for ecolabels, which would need to go through verification and certification processes.

Thanks to the EF methods, companies that make environmental claims could turn to GOs/PPAs to back up their claims from 2027 onwards, depending on the legislation’s implementation timeline.