BREAZE

Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs)

Under the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) - a scheme set up under Commonwealth law to promote the development of renewable energy - installation of solar and heat pump hot water heaters may be eligible to create Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). In order to stimulate the Renewable Energy sector, MRET requires Electrical Retailers (eg ‘Origin’) to source a certain percentage of the electrical energy they sell from renewable energy sources. RECs were created as a market-based mechanism to allow the buying and selling of this renewable energy sourced electricity. Thus, electrical retailers ‘buy’ RECs in order to comply with the mandated percentage targets of Federal MRET legislation.

While households can create and trade these certificates on their own, Registered Agents (eg ‘Greenbank’) may create and trade RECs on behalf of households. Registered Agents will generally pay the household for the right to create RECs, meaning the cost of the hot water system to the household is reduced. This will provide additional cost reductions to eligible hot water systems.

To be eligible for the Solar Hot Water Rebate, a hot water system must be eligible for at least 20 RECs at the time of purchase at the installation address. A list of eligible systems is available in the Register of Solar Water Heaters

Hot water system retailers can also advise you on the number of RECs assigned to a system and the number of RECs assigned to the AAE systems are indicated in the price tables found on the website.

More information about RECs is available on the Office of the Renewable Energy website:
* Renewable Energy Certificates - www.orer.gov.au/recs
* Solar Hot Water Heaters - www.orer.gov.au/swh

Before you commit to selling your RECs, you may, however, want to read the article written by ATA (The Alternative Technology Association) regarding the selling of RECs. The sale of RECs will reduce the price of your solar hot water unit, but by doing so, you will be essentially selling the ‘renewableness’ of your renewable energy system to somebody else (ie an electrical retailer, who needs to buy RECs in order to comply with their mandated targets). In other words, by selling RECs, you will be allowing electrical retailers to meet their MANDATORY targets, but will not be contributing renewable energy IN ADDITION to these mandatory targets (which are now 20% of renewable energy by 2020)

ATA: “Don’t wreck those RECs”