National Standardisation Bodies in the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) adopted the updated EN16325 GO standard on 6 March 2025, replacing its predecessor, after which it will be transposed into national standards by the CEN members by November 2025. The standard will be made available from July 2025 onwards, after undergoing some editorial edits.
The standard will undergo further changes with work commencing in September 2025, according to Veyt sources.
The standard relates to guarantees of origin (GO) for energy from renewable sources. EN 16325 sets the standard that EU countries must follow for their GO systems to meet the requirements of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED III), the Internal Electricity Market Directive and other relevant European legislation. In turn, Article 19 in RED imposes on Member States the requirement to ensure that their GO systems comply with the EN16325 standard.
The updated version is now extended beyond electricity to cover gases such as biomethane and hydrogen, as well as heating and cooling to create a uniform and reliable tracking system in Europe.
The AIB’s European Energy Certificate System (EECS) is already closely aligned with the new CEN GO standard. The difference between the two is that CEN is a legally enforced standard, whereas EECS is voluntary and contractually binding. AIB members will now discuss how to synchronise EECS with CEN further while continuing to implement both frameworks.
Energy source codes in Annex A have been refined, with more granularity for feedstock types. Technology codes now included for gas as well. Extra details make the case for GOs to be used as a tracking instrument for schemes which previously relied on tailored solutions (e.g. dena biogas registry).
The revised standard institutes the transfer and reception of GOs to/from registries only, meaning that non-GO registries such as the German Energy Agency’s (dena) Biogasregister Deutschland, would be affected.
In turn, dena does not believe the biomethane trade will be impacted due to a transitional period that will determine by when national registries must implement the standard. National CEN members need to transpose the standards by November 2025, which could buy GO registries more time, with transfers still possible via the ERGaR certificate of origin (CoO) scheme.
The Federal Environment Agency (UBA), the AIB’s electricity scheme member, plans to establish and run the gas GO register in 2026 at the earliest.
Optionally, gas GOs may contain information on compliance with sustainability requirements. The link between GO registries and the Union Database (UDB) is yet to be fully established, but if GOs offer both flexibility and standardisation at the same time, GO registries may be relied upon more heavily in renewable energy target reporting.
CEN 16325 requires GO registries to record details on public support (previously optional), the types of energy inputs and outputs the device may use or produce, and any label scheme the device is accredited to.
To hold an account in a GO registry, Competent Bodies are allowed to request additional information for due diligence purposes, such as names of the company’s shareholders and owner, VAT number, and financial information (e.g. latest audited financial statement).
On the GO itself, information on whether it was issued after a conversion or energy storage release, and whether public support was received by the production device, energy unit, both, or neither, along with the type of the support scheme, now needs to be filled out.
The updated standard also provides for additional optional information on a GO for electricity:
1) a quantified carbon footprint and methodology used,
2) for nuclear GOs, quantified radioactive waste production and methodology used
Under the revised standard, stored electricity is eligible for GO issuance only if:
it was produced at the same location as the storage system,
the amount stored matches the amount later used,
it hasn’t received and won’t receive other GOs for the same purpose,
its origin is only disclosed for the purpose of charging the storage system, and these attributes are used to define the GOs linked to the output.
Additionally, the standard introduces and updates definitions for “cogeneration”, “conversion issuance” and “transfer request”, in line with the EECS rules definitions as CEN builds upon them; while “public support” is defined in the same way as in RED II.
For a full overview of the updated CEN 16325 standard, please consult the standard here; alternatively, see the summary provided by the RECS Energy Certificate Association on their website (available to members).
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