London, 3 November (Argus) — The Australian government has today formally launched its guarantee of origin (GOO) scheme, a voluntary framework to track emissions associated with certain products as well as consumption of renewable electricity.
Businesses can now register with the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) for two types of certificates. Product guarantees of origin (PGOs) will account for emissions arising from the production, transport and storage of products, starting from green hydrogen and later expanding to green metals, low-carbon liquid fuels and biomethane. Renewable guarantees of origin (Regos) will enable organisations to certify the use of power from renewable sources on a voluntary basis.
The announcement follows a consultation on the new framework first opened in 2023 and an initial plan for it to be launched on 1 January 2025. Funding for the programme was then increased to A$70.4mn ($47.5mn) in May 2024, and its start date moved to the second half of 2025.
The Future Made in Australia Bill introduced in 2024 formally established the PGO and Rego schemes and the government consulted on using PGO certificates to track hydrogen and derivatives earlier this year.
Regos will eventually replace the existing large-scale generation certificates (LGCs), which will come to an end on 31 December 2030 along with mandatory renewable energy targets for liable entities. Until then, they “will overlap with the Renewable Energy Target (RET) certification scheme for five years, providing long-term certainty for renewable electricity investment and procurement”, the Australian government said today.
LGC prices have been on a downtrend this year, because supply has outstripped demand, with spot contracts falling from above A$30/MWh ($20/MWh) at the start of 2025 to around A$10/MWh at the end of September, according to the CER. And the price curve has overall been in steep backwardation as the RET approaches its 2030 end. Spot LGC trades were concluded at A$/MWh on 31 October, with calendar year 2030 trading at A$/MWh on the same day.
The demand outlook for Regos looks unclear in the short-term, while they co-exist with the compliance-based LGC system, and in the longer term, once the market becomes fully voluntary after 2030, some market participants told Argus.
For producers, while the option will be there in the next five years to issue either type of certificate, “it is expected LGCs will be preferred over REGOs […] as LGCs can be used for both RET obligations and voluntary surrenders, while Regos cannot be surrendered under the LRET”, the CER said in its June quarterly report. An exception could be the use of time stamping, since Regos will carry additional temporal information down to the hour of power generation or dispatch.
Regos can also be issued for “below-baseline” generation from facilities commissioned before 1997 — currently excluded from LGC certification — subject to restrictions, as well as for electricity exports.
The panel tasked to review the National Electricity Market (NEM) earlier this year proposed a centralised mechanism to purchase Regos through auctions and contracts for difference (CfDs) based on Rego prices, in order to provide certainty for project developers around potential revenue streams.
By Giulio Bajona
