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I. General overview of existing legal framework
The incentive schemes applicable to renewable energy sources are regulated in the Renewable Energy Sources Act dated 20 February 2015 (“RES Act”) and the respective secondary legislation.
[Applicability of the main incentive schemes]
Under the foregoing legislation, the installations generating electricity from renewable energy sources (hereinafter “RES Installations”) may benefit from one of the following incentive schemes, depending on the date of commissioning of the installation:
- CERTIFICATE-BASED SCHEME – applicable solely to the RES Installations commissioned by 1 July 2016;
- AUCTION SYSTEM – applicable to all RES Installations:
- commissioned before 1 July 2016 – if the operator of the pertinent RES Installation decided to start in the auction available to such installation and give up the certificate-based incentive scheme upon winning the auction, except for the following types of RES Installations commissioned before 1 July 2016:
- hydro power installations with total installed electric power exceeding 20 MW;
- multi-fuel power plants which are not qualified as “dedicated multi-fuel power plants”.
- commissioned after 1 July 2016 and upon completion of the pertinent auction,
- commissioned after 30 June 2016 but before completion of the auction in which given RES installation was selected – if the entire electricity from such installation generated before completion of the respective auction was sold at the commodity exchange and/or organized market by end of December 2020 and such manner of electricity sale was notified to the President of the Energy Regulatory Office not later than 14 days before the date of commissioning (the 2019 RES Act Amendment clarified that the statutory obligation to fed into the grid whole electricity generated in the RES installation until 31 December 2020 does pertain to only those installations which generated electricity for the first time before the date of the RES auction in which they are willing to participate),
– with reservation that the total period of support available to the RES Installation under either certificate-based or auction-based schemes cannot exceed 15 years from first generation.
