Innovation and institutional change: the transition to a sustainable ...

The institutionalisation of green electricity 177
renewable sources, generally known as feed-in premiums. Innovative aspects
of the new scheme were its differentiation for different renewable energy
sources and the time-period of 10 years that was fixed as period of
compensation 24 . Differentiation led to solar power, small hydropower, offshore
wind, and small ‘pure’ stand-alone biomass power plants receiving
higher compensation per kilowatthour produced than on-shore wind, cocombustion
of biomass, and the biomass fraction in waste.
Green electricity markets in other European countries
After the introduction of green electricity as a separate product based on
electricity from renewables in the Netherlands the concept had diffused to
other European countries, e.g. Sweden, Finland, UK, and Germany (van Dijk
et al, 2003: 34). The success of the Dutch scheme in terms of the number of
green electricity customers is however unparalleled in Europe. Bird et al.
(2002: 531) for example estimate shares of 1 to 2% of customers opting for
green electricity in a range of European countries compared to 13% in the
Netherlands at that time. No systematic study is available to explain these
differences but one can tentatively point at some typical elements in the
introduction process and the institutional setting in the Netherlands. These
include the initial role of WWF as third-party verifier and as promoter of the
concept, the broad national support and information and marketing
campaigns for green electricity prior to liberalisation of the green electricity
market, the competitive price of green electricity due to exemption from the
regulatory energy tax, the positioning of main Dutch electricity distributors
in anticipation of an European electricity market with a focus on a green
profile, the choice to accelerate liberalisation of the green electricity market
in order to gain experience prior to full liberalisation, the intensive and
aggressive marketing campaigns to attract green electricity customers once
the market was liberalised, and the significant media attention for the green
electricity market throughout the process.
The success of green electricity in combination with the difficulty of swiftly
enacting renewable facilities in the Netherlands led Dutch energy
distributors towards the end of the nineties to explore the possibility of
importing green electricity. One way would be to extend the system of green
labels to green electricity produced in other countries. This idea emerged at a
project meeting where EnergieNed, the association of Dutch energy
distributors, presented the green label system to other European project
participants. In 1999 this resulted in the official start of RECS: the
24 These elements were innovative in the Dutch setting but already general procedure in for
example Germany.