New Delhi: Energy exchanges IEX and PXIL have expressed hope that renewable energy certificate (REC) trading will resume after three months on October 28 as electricity tribunal APTEL has concluded hearing on the REC pricing issue.
Trading of RECs is done on the last Wednesday of every month on the Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) and the Power Exchange India (PXIL).
The green certificates trading was stopped in July this year after the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) decided to postpone the trading by four weeks, while hearing three separate petitions related to an issue of fixing floor and forbearance prices of RECs by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC).
Talking to PTI on the issue, PXIL Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Prabhajit Kumar Sarkar said, “APTEL has concluded the hearing expeditiously and reserved its judgement. We hope that the order on case would be issued soon and REC trading may resume this month only, on October 28.”
IEX Corporate Communication Head Shruti Bhatia said, “The REC trading should be resumed at the soonest. We really hope that APTEL gives its final order soon so that green certificates trading can be resumed this month only on October 28 without any further delays.”
According to the latest update on the case available on the APTEL portal, the arguments on the three petitions are concluded and judgement is reserved.
It also says that the interim order, if any, shall continue till the judgment is pronounced.
That means the REC trading would not be done till the final judgement is pronounced because APTEL had postponed the green certificates trading in its interim order.
Earlier in July, the APTEL had postponed the trading of REC scheduled on July 29 by four weeks till August 26, after hearing three separate appeals filed by the Green Energy Association, the Indian Wind Power Association and Techno Electric and Engineering Company Ltd against the CERC order issued on fixing REC floor and forbearance prices.
REC trading was not done on August 26 as well as September 30, consequently.
In the order issued on August 26 after hearing the three appeals again, APTEL said, “Interim order, if any, shall continue till the next date of hearing… List the matter for hearing on September 4 and 5.”
According to a CERC order in June, the floor price of solar and non-solar RECs has been reduced to zero from Rs 1,000 earlier.
Similarly, the forbearance (ceiling) price of solar and non-solar was reduced to Rs 1,000 for both from Rs 2,400 and Rs 3,000, respectively.
The forbearance price and floor price fixed by the CERC are effective from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021 or until further orders of the Commission.
In June, the Supreme Court had refused to entertain Green Energy Association’s (GEA) appeal on stopping REC price revision by the CERC.
Industry experts were of the view that higher REC prices put additional burden on consumers in power tariff.
Under the renewable purchase obligation (RPO), bulk purchasers like discoms, open access consumers and capacitive users are required to buy a certain proportion of RECs. They can buy RECs from renewable energy producers to meet the RPO norms.
One REC is created when one megawatt hour of electricity is generated from an eligible renewable energy source.
Sales of renewable energy certificates declined over 29 per cent to 89.27 lakh units in 2019-20, compared to 1.26 crore units in 2018-19.