Today I published this story about double counting of renewable electricity https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/how-iceland-sold-the-same-green-electricity-twice.html a bit of a backstory: Last year I was invited to a press trip about, datacenters powered by renewable energy in iceland. So I started looking into Iceland's use of renewable energy. 🧵
How Iceland sold the same Green Electricity twice

European renewable energy certificate led to double counting of the same electricity from Iceland. Certificate exports have now been suspended. But the problem is not restricted to Iceland.

There's two things to know about Iceland and Electricity: First, it uses almost 100% renewables, hydro and geothermal. Second, it produces a lot of electricity compared to its small population. It has attracted energy intensive industries, particularly Aluminium. When researching this I learned that Iceland exports renewable energy certificates - so-called guarantees of origin - to other european countries.
But something seemed odd. Everyone in Iceland - and every company in Iceland - claimed to be using 100% renewables. But if they export certificates, at least nominally they'd be using fossil or nuclear energy. Looking at the Aluminium companies, it was quite obvious: They're using more than half of Iceland's electricity and all claim it is green. And more than half of the electricity gets "exported" as GOs. Doesn't match up.
So the green electricity is counted twice. But at first, basically nobody wanted to talk to me. The european Association of Issuing Bodies was slow to answer. Landsvirkjun, the electricity copmany, said they won't comment on their customers. But eventually, I was able to confirm that this is really what's going on and I wasn't just misunderstanding things.
Now recently I learned there was a conference around these guarantees of origin in Dessau. Not far from where I live. So I went there, and things got more interesting. I learned there was a compliance assessment of Iceland due to my reporting and my questions.
I also learned that an austrian company - Verbund - had complained before about very similar problems. But not with Iceland. With Norway. Norway is an even bigger exporter of guarantees of origin.
A few days ago it was announced that Iceland's exports of guarantees of origin have been suspended. Question just remains: What about Norway?

@hanno (Yes, what about Norway? Personally I think this entire green certificate thing is a scam that only serves to make some people rich, and doesn't help the world one bit, so it would be completely fine by me if Norway stopped...)

(but that's just this Norwegians opinion)