A green electricity plan in Ireland is a contractual and accounting arrangement, not a different wire into your house. Suppliers match your annual demand with renewable generation and with Guarantees of Origin, electronic certificates worth 1 MWh each that trade across Europe separately from the electricity itself. The regulator says so openly: the published fuel mix is calculated after those certificates are applied and is "not an indication of the actual amount of electricity produced from each fuel type". For 2024 the all-island disclosed mix was 62.35% renewable, helped by 20,259,452 imported certificates. SEAI's physical measure for Ireland was 41.3% in 2024 and 40.9% in 2025. Green plans are legal, regulated and audited. They just do something narrower than most people assume.
Every figure on this page was read from the regulator's, the market operator's or SEAI's own published documents on 24 August 2026. Where a number comes from a supplier's own page, it says so.
What a "Green" Plan Legally Means Here
Ireland has two separate mechanisms sitting behind that word, and they answer two different questions.
The first is Fuel Mix Disclosure. Every licensed supplier has to tell you the mix of fuels behind the electricity it sold, plus the carbon intensity in grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour. SEMO, the market operator, runs the calculation on behalf of the CRU each year for the previous calendar year. The numbers then have to appear on your bill within two months of the CRU publishing them. That obligation comes from Article 18(6) and Annex I of EU Directive 2019/944, so it is not optional and not a marketing choice.
The second is Green Source Product Verification, or GSPV. A supplier whose overall fuel mix is below 100% renewable can still sell a plan advertised as 100% green, because only some of its customers are on that plan. GSPV is the annual, opt-in, after-the-fact audit that checks the supplier actually held enough renewable generation and certificates to cover everyone who bought the green product. SEMO performs it, the CRU publishes the result, and the rules come from a 2015 CRU decision, CER/15/205.
Route one: the supplier's whole fuel mix is already 100% renewable, so every customer is a green customer and no separate verification is needed. Sixteen suppliers were in this position for 2024.
Route two: the supplier's overall mix is below 100%, so the green plan is carved out of it and verified separately. Four suppliers took this route for 2024.
Which Suppliers Were Verified for 2024
The CRU published the Green Source Product Verification Report 2024 on 10 December 2025. Here is the whole picture, straight from it.
| Category | Suppliers |
|---|---|
| Passed the GSPV audit overall mix below 100%, green plan verified separately |
Electric Ireland, PrePay Power, Arden Energy, Energia RoI |
| Exempt: whole fuel mix already 100% renewable | Bord Gáis Energy, SSE Airtricity (IE), Pinergy, Flogas Natural Gas, Flogas Enterprise Solutions (IE), Panda Power, Go Power (IE), Axpo, Captured Carbon, Cenergise Trading, Ecopower, ElectroRoute Energy Supply, Edenderry Supply Company, Statkraft Markets, Dublin Waste to Energy Supply, BRI Green Energy Supply / Ørsted |
| Offered no green product in 2024 | Waterpower Engineering, Community Power |
Source: CRU Green Source Product Verification Report 2024 (CRU2025242), 10 December 2025. Six suppliers went through GSPV for 2023; four did for 2024, because Bord Gáis Energy and Axpo moved into the exempt group.
Two things follow from that table. A supplier being absent from the GSPV list is not a black mark, because most of the market never needed it. And the verification is ex post: it confirms what happened during 2024, published near the end of 2025. It is a receipt, not a live guarantee.
The Numbers Suppliers Have to Print on Your Bill
This is the 2024 disclosure, the one appearing on Irish bills through 2026. Renewable share and carbon intensity, per supplier, for the Republic.
| Supplier (ROI licence) | Renewable | Gas | CO2 g/kWh |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bord Gáis Energy | 100% | 0% | 0 |
| SSE Airtricity | 100% | 0% | 0 |
| Pinergy | 100% | 0% | 0 |
| Flogas Natural Gas | 100% | 0% | 0 |
| Panda Power | 100% | 0% | 0 |
| Energia | 75.48% | 22.47% | 108 |
| Electric Ireland | 68.5% | 29.2% | 134 |
| Community Power | 43.74% | 51.55% | 247 |
| Arden Energy | 30.32% | 63.85% | 306 |
| PrePay Power | 29.96% | 64.18% | 308 |
| Waterpower Engineering | 26.88% | 67.00% | 341 |
| All-island average | 62.35% | 34.72% | 163 |
Source: All-Island Fuel Mix Disclosure and CO2 Emissions 2024 (SEM-25-060), published 14 November 2025. Waterpower did not submit a declaration and was assigned the residual mix. Coal, oil and waste make up the remainder of each row.
Read the low rows properly. PrePay Power's 29.96% is the average across all its customers. A PrePay Power customer on its green product was on a 100% renewable, 0 g/kWh mix, and the customers not on it were on 29.11% renewable at 311 g/kWh. Same company, two labels, and the audit says both are accurate. Electric Ireland splits the same way: 100% and 0 g for green-plan customers, 60.39% and 169 g for everyone else.
The Gap Between the Label and the Wire
Now the part that makes people uneasy.
The all-island disclosed mix for 2024 was 62.35% renewable. SEAI, measuring what physically happened in Ireland, put the renewable share of electricity at 41.3% in 2024 and 40.9% in 2025. Those are different geographies and different methods, so they were never going to match exactly. They are not supposed to be 21 points apart either.
What closes the gap is stated in the regulator's own report. In 2024, suppliers imported 20,259,452 Guarantees of Origin into the Single Electricity Market, up 11.7% on the 18,130,181 imported the year before. Each certificate represents one megawatt hour generated from a renewable source somewhere in the European Economic Area. Certificates are tradable and, in the SEM Committee's words, "do not need to follow the physical flow of energy". The report adds that including them "has the effect of increasing the figure for renewables and reducing the figures for non-renewables in the fuel mix when compared to the actual metered generation".
It is: proof that one megawatt hour of renewable electricity was generated in the EEA, issued to the generator, tradable through the Association of Issuing Bodies hub, and usable once and once only. There is no double counting.
It is not: a delivery. A certificate bought from a Norwegian hydro plant does not move electrons to Portlaoise. Nor does buying one, by itself, cause another turbine to be built. If additionality is what you care about, a certificate is the wrong instrument to look for it in.
Since 1 January 2021, UK REGOs have not been accepted in Ireland, a Brexit consequence. Irish suppliers use EEA certificates only.
None of this is a loophole. It is the design, written into the EU Renewables Directive and into Irish law, and it is exactly what Energia describes on its own renewable electricity page: annual demand matched with an equivalent amount of renewable generation, "achieved through renewable generation and Guarantees of Origin certificates relating to renewable electricity generated in Ireland and Europe". Energia also states the obvious physical truth that most marketing skips, that electricity from all sources mixes on the grid and no one can tell you which generator lit your kitchen.
How Much of a Green Plan Is Irish Generation?
The verification report answers this, and it is the most useful table in the whole document. It splits each supplier's renewable share into two parts: electricity procured through PSO-supported contracts with Irish renewable generators, and everything else, which is non-PSO generation plus imported certificates.
| Supplier | PSO-supported | Non-PSO (incl. imported certificates) |
|---|---|---|
| Ørsted / BRI Green Energy Supply | 62.7% | 37.3% |
| Flogas Enterprise Solutions (IE) | 49.1% | 50.9% |
| Bord Gáis Energy | 35.6% | 64.4% |
| SSE Airtricity (IE) | 31.2% | 68.8% |
| Energia (green-plan customers) | 29.47% | 70.53% |
| Panda Power | 23.2% | 76.8% |
| Electric Ireland (green-plan customers) | 13.30% | 86.70% |
| Pinergy | 5.9% | 94.1% |
| Go Power (IE) | 5.9% | 94.1% |
| Axpo | 5.9% | 94.1% |
Source: CRU Green Source Product Verification Report 2024, Tables 4 to 8. The PSO share reflects each supplier's procurement through contracts supported by the PSO levy, which every electricity customer in the country pays regardless of tariff.
A low PSO share is not evidence of anything shady. It reflects how a supplier buys, and a company with no PSO contracts at all still has to source certificates for every unit it sells as green. But if your reason for choosing a green plan is to back Irish renewable generation specifically, that column is the one that answers your question, and it varies from 5.9% to 62.7% depending on who you sign with.
How to Choose Without Being Sold To
Four steps, in order.
1. Read the label already on your bill. The fuel mix and the CO2 figure are legally required to be there, in grams per kilowatt hour, rounded to one decimal place. You do not need a comparison site to find your own supplier's number.
2. Check the verification, not the adjective. Suppliers offering green products must make their GSPV result available on their website, by phone and in hard copy on request. That is a CER/15/205 requirement. If a plan is marketed as green and the supplier is neither in the CRU's verified list nor in the 100%-renewable list, ask them directly which one applies.
3. Do not pay a premium for the word. Several of the cheapest suppliers in the country disclose a 100% renewable mix, and several expensive ones do not. Greenness and price are set independently here, so treat them as two separate questions and settle the price one with our cheapest electricity supplier league table.
4. If you have panels, price the whole plan. Import rate, standing charge and export rate together, in that order of importance. Our guide to the best electricity plan for solar owners works through why a headline export rate is usually worth about half what the same movement in the import rate is worth, and the Clean Export Guarantee rate comparison has the current export numbers. When you move, the switching process has one extra step for microgenerators.
The One Unit of Electricity That Needs No Certificate
The honest version, without the sales gloss.
A green tariff changes the accounting behind electricity you buy. It is real, it is audited, and it is not nothing. What it cannot do is change the physics of the grid at the moment you boil a kettle, and it does not, on its own, add a megawatt of new Irish generation.
Electricity generated on your own roof is different in kind. It is consumed metres from where it was made, it displaces a unit you would otherwise have imported from a grid that was 42.0% fossil-fuelled in 2025, and it needs no certificate to substantiate it. Anything you do not use gets exported to your neighbours through the microgeneration scheme, and your supplier pays you for it.
The scale is no longer trivial. SEAI recorded 1.65 TWh of solar PV generation in Ireland in 2025, half again on 2024 and 150% above 2023. Large-scale solar farms accounted for two thirds of it. The other third came off rooftops, domestic and commercial. Meanwhile Ireland imported 16.3% of its electricity across interconnectors in 2025, up 21% on the year before.
A green tariff changes the paperwork. A roof changes the meter.
Solar cuts the units you buy at all, with up to €1,800 off the install from SEAI. Get free, no-obligation quotes from SEAI-registered installers in your county.
Get a Solar QuoteFrequently Asked Questions
Yes, in the specific sense the rules define. A green plan means the supplier held enough renewable generation and Guarantees of Origin to cover the annual demand of everyone on that plan, either because its whole fuel mix was 100% renewable or because it passed the CRU's Green Source Product Verification audit. It does not mean renewable electrons were routed to your house. The grid mixes all sources, and the SEM Committee states plainly that the disclosed fuel mix is calculated after certificates are applied and is not an indication of what was physically generated.
An electronic certificate proving that one megawatt hour of electricity was generated from a renewable source in the European Economic Area. Certificates are issued to generators, traded through the Association of Issuing Bodies hub, and can be used once each, so there is no double counting. They are tradable separately from the electricity, which is why a supplier can hold certificates from Europe and still count them in an Irish fuel mix. Irish suppliers imported 20,259,452 of them in 2024.
For the 2024 disclosure year, the ROI suppliers with a 100% renewable declared fuel mix and 0 g/kWh included Bord Gáis Energy, SSE Airtricity, Pinergy, Flogas Natural Gas, Flogas Enterprise Solutions, Panda Power, Go Power, Axpo, Ecopower, ElectroRoute Energy Supply, Cenergise Trading, Captured Carbon, Edenderry Supply Company and Ørsted's Irish supply arm. Energia disclosed 75.48%, Electric Ireland 68.5%, Arden Energy 30.32% and PrePay Power 29.96%, each of which also sold a separately verified 100% green product.
Because the two figures measure different things. SEAI's 41.3% for 2024 and 40.9% for 2025 measure electricity physically generated from renewable sources in Ireland. A supplier's fuel mix measures the generation and certificates it acquired to cover what its customers used, across the all-island market and including imports from the EEA. The all-island disclosed figure for 2024 was 62.35% renewable against a physical picture nothing like that, and the difference is imported certificates. Both numbers are honest; they answer different questions.
Not systematically. Price and fuel mix are set independently, and several suppliers with a 100% renewable declared mix compete at the cheap end of the market while some with a much lower renewable share do not. Treat the two as separate decisions: pick on price and contract terms, then check the fuel mix label on the plan you chose. If the supplier's overall mix is below 100% and the plan is sold as green, confirm it appears in the CRU's verification report.
Not directly, and it is worth being clear about that. Buying a certificate transfers an existing renewable attribute to your account; it does not add generation to the grid or change what the power stations ran that evening. What it does is create demand for renewable attributes and signal preference to the market. If you want a change that shows up in physical generation, self-generation and demand reduction are the levers a household actually controls.
On your bill. Licensed suppliers must show the fuel mix and CO2 intensity within two months of the CRU publishing the annual disclosure paper, and if the information is on the back of the bill the front must point to it. Suppliers offering green products must also make their Green Source Product Verification result available on their website, over the phone and in hard copy on request. The underlying reports are published by the SEM Committee and the CRU each year, usually in November and December.
They do different jobs. A green tariff addresses the attributes of electricity you buy. Solar reduces how much you buy at all, and what it generates is consumed on site rather than certified from elsewhere. Solar also pays you back financially through avoided import and through export payments under the Clean Export Guarantee, which a green tariff does not. The two are not mutually exclusive, and a solar home still needs a supplier.
Sources: All figures read from the following documents on 24 August 2026. All-island and per-supplier fuel mix, CO2 intensities, imported certificate volumes, the residual mix, the GO mechanism and the billing obligation from the SEM Committee's All-Island Fuel Mix Disclosure and CO2 Emissions 2024 (SEM-25-060), published 14 November 2025. Verified supplier lists, green versus non-green customer mixes and the PSO split from the CRU's Green Source Product Verification Report 2024 (CRU2025242), published 10 December 2025. The definition of a Guarantee of Origin, the role of SEMO and the disclosure requirement from the CRU's fuel mix and guarantees of origin page. Ireland's physical renewable electricity share for 2024 from SEAI's renewables statistics, and the 2025 electricity supply, solar generation and import figures from SEAI's Interim National Energy Balance 2025, published 19 May 2026. Supplier matching methodology and the customer-facing fuel mix table quoted from Energia's renewable electricity page.
Published: 24 August 2026. Author: Neil Russell. Fuel mix figures are published annually in arrears, so the 2024 disclosure is the current one until the 2025 report appears, expected late 2026. Supplier plans and prices change; check the current position before you sign anything.