There are two important aspects of renewable technologies in the Article 7 EED.
One is that, while the cumulative end-use energy savings in the first obligation period are based on ‘energy sales to final customers’, the EED deliberately changes the basis for the second and subsequent periods to ‘final energy consumption’. As a result, Member States must include energy generated for own end-use (e.g. electricity generated by photovoltaic systems, heat generated by solar thermal collectors or the co-firing of waste in industry) in the baseline calculation for those periods.
Among the sectors that could be excluded from the calculations, like, for example, sales of energy used in ETS industry. This option allows Member States to exclude a verifiable amount of energy generated for own use by new renewable energy installations on or in buildings from the calculation of energy savings required under Article 7(2) and (3) EED. Its use is restricted in three respects:
- no more than 30% of energy generated for own use by new renewable energy installations on or in buildings can be excluded from the baseline calculation;
- this must not lead to a reduction of more than 35% of the amount calculated pursuant to Article 7(2) and (3) EED; and
- the amount of such energy must not be excluded from the calculation of the savings obligation under point (b) in the first subparagraph of Article 7(1) EED.
On the other side, energy savings resulting from measures promoting the installation of small-scale renewable energy technologies on or in buildings can be counted towards the savings required under Article 7(1) EED. These could include:
- promoting the role of local renewable energy communities in contributing to the implementation of alternative policy measures;
- policy measures promoting the installation of small-scale renewable technologies on or in buildings.
It is important to take into consideration that the requirements of additionality and materiality, and the Member State’s established monitoring and verification rules also apply.
An example on how the Member State integrates this rule from Croatia.