EUGENE ceases to exist in its current form

After 5 years of good cooperation, EUGENE’s General Assembly has voted in favour of its dismantling. It was agreed that the members and board would continue to work together to promote green energy in Europe, but that the EUGENE standard and the association (ASBL) under Belgian law would cease to exist. The CLEAN-E project results (Intelligent Energy Europe project) will still be available on the www.clean-e.org website.

EUGENE has stimulated several debates about the need for additionality and ecological power plant standards (e.g. on hydro power and biomass) in green power products in different countries. It has contributed to the development of new criteria and has helped existing labels to improve. EUGENE has opened up a playing field on which new green power labels can build and discussions can take place. Finally it has guided several companies and organisations in their purchasing plans.

We still believe that green power labels have the key role to maintain and enhance consumer confidence. For the average consumer it is often rather difficult or even impossible to verify the ecological performance of different green power offerings. Quality labels that define a minimum standard for green power products, ensure independent verification of the product claims, and are operated and/or endorsed by organisations with an excellent public reputation have the potential to assist consumers to find their way through the variety of different offerings and to finally take informed purchase decisions.

However, the last 5 years it became clear that green power labels are difficult to harmonise, as they are tailored to the needs of different national electricity markets and national consumer expectations. Creating new labels in some countries has proved difficult, as several European markets are not adapted for a functioning voluntary green power market. The first aim of EUGENE, to create a harmonised quality standard for labels, became difficult to implement further than its current state.

We see some new challenges for green power labels coming up. The Renewable Energy directive targets are ambitious and labels will need to be increasingly creative to provide additionality to the customer. Also, the European Commission has committed to develop sustainability criteria for biomass electricity, on which labels will have to build. But we are convinced that labels will continue to play an important role, supporting voluntary markets and protecting the consumer from misleading offers.

Yours sincerely,

Former Board Members

Jean-Philippe Denruyter - WWF International
Veit Bürger - Öko Institut
Ursula Stocker - VUE
Heikki Willstedt - WWF Spain/ADENA
Raphaël Claustre - CLER