Blackout of the Austrian supply network only just prevented

Due to the increased power flow caused by a breakdown of the Hungary-Croatia 380 kV line a critical situation occurred in the supra-regional Austrian power grid today, Wednesday, before noon.

Thus VERBUND has sold RECS-certificates covering a volume of no less than over 1 million megawatt hours since 2001, around 90 % of them as independent product regardless of the electricity supply.

RECS (Renewable Energy Certificate System) is a new standardized certification system with 170 members in thirteen European countries at the moment. For the years 2004 and 2005 alone, VERBUND has already put over 600,000 MWh on the market as RECS-futures.

Thus everything is pointing towards growth, as the clients’ demand for clean energy is continuously increasing. There is an increasing demand especially for certificates from the Vienna Freudenau power plant, Europe’s technologically most advanced large hydroelectric power plant. As electricity producer boasting the largest proportion of hydropower within the E.U. VERBUND is making use of the opportunities offered by RECS-certificate trading.