The EU electricity disclosure from the business perspective—A study from Norway

The EU Electricity Directive requires that consumers be provided information about the sources from which the electricity is produced, as well as about the CO2 emissions and the radioactive waste resulting from production sources. In this paper we examine the effectiveness of this information strategy based on a case study focusing on Norwegian enterprises. We explore the views of selected companies on the electricity disclosure scheme. We examine how effective the disclosure scheme is in informing and stimulating companies to buy green electricity products, and link this to what we know about the effects of information disclosure from the literature. Our results show that the information disclosed does to a little extent reach the businesses, and that firms express distrust in the system of Guarantees of Origin (GoO), which leads to distrust in the relevance of the information given through the disclosure scheme.

Research highlights
► The information disclosed does to a little extent reach the businesses and catch their interest.
► Firms express distrust in the Guarantees of Origin System (GoO), which leads to distrust in the relevance of the information given through the disclosure system.
► Many firms point out that the absence of a mechanism to convert GoO revenue to investment in new green production weakens the legitimacy of the disclosure system.