What are ERE certificates? How home charging earns you money

Since 1 January 2026, charging at home is worth money. If you own a private charging station, the electricity that goes into your EV can be registered as emission reduction units (EREs, Dutch: emissiereductie-eenheden): tradable certificates proving that renewable energy was delivered to road transport. Fuel suppliers are legally required to buy those certificates — and that money goes to you.

This article explains where EREs come from, how the official formula works, what a certificate is worth and how to take part.

The essentials

• What: an ERE is a certificate for 1 kg of CO₂ avoided through electric charging.
• Who: owners of a private charging station with a built-in MID meter.
• How much: indicatively around €0.10 to €0.14 net per kWh — hundreds of euros a year. Run the numbers for your situation.
• How: through a registration service provider ("inboekdienstverlener") that registers your charge sessions with the Dutch Emissions Authority (NEa); private individuals cannot register with the NEa themselves.
• Since when: 1 January 2026 — sessions from before you signed up can count from that date too.

Where do ERE certificates come from?

The Netherlands wants to decarbonise road transport. The Regeling energie vervoer (Energy for Transport Regulation), renewed on 1 January 2026, obliges fuel suppliers to reduce the CO₂ intensity of the fuel they sell, year after year. That obligation is monitored by the Dutch Emissions Authority (NEa).

Suppliers can meet the obligation by delivering renewable fuel themselves — or by buying certificates from parties that already do. Electricity for electric cars counts fully: every kWh you charge at home displaces petrol and diesel.

What's new since 2026 is that private charging points can monetise that avoided emission as well. Your charge sessions are converted into EREs, which are sold on the market to parties with a reduction obligation. The fossil sector quite literally helps pay for your electric kilometres.

The scheme is laid down in the Regeling energie vervoer and administered by the NEa — see emissieautoriteit.nl for the official documentation.

The official NEa formula

How many EREs a charge session yields is fixed by a formula:

ERE = kWh × renewable share × fossil reference × 3.6 / 1000

The parameters are set per year. For 2026:

One ERE equals 1 kg of avoided CO₂. Filled in for 2026: 1 kWh × 0.505 × 183 × 3.6 / 1000 ≈ 0.33 ERE per kWh.

An average household charging 3,000 kWh a year at home therefore produces about 1,000 EREs — a tonne of avoided CO₂, in writing.

Note: the renewable share is a nationally fixed percentage. Whether you charge with grey power, green power or your own solar panels makes no difference to the number of EREs.

What is an ERE worth?

EREs are traded on a market: fuel suppliers buy them to meet their annual obligation. The price is not fixed — it moves with supply and demand, much like the HBE market (the predecessor scheme for businesses) has for years.

As an indication, we use three scenarios for the gross market value:

What moves the price: the size of the annual obligation, the supply of renewable fuels, and how many charging points get registered. All amounts are indicative — nobody can guarantee the market price, and providers who do deserve a sceptical look.

The provider's service fee comes off the gross proceeds. We charge a percentage of the actual proceeds (indicatively 20%) — no subscription, no fixed costs.

ERE, HBE or GvO: what's the difference?

Reading up on this topic, you'll run into three abbreviations that are easily confused. They look alike, but mean three different things:

• ERE (emissiereductie-eenheid, emission reduction unit). The certificate this article is about: 1 kg of avoided CO₂ through renewable energy in transport, and since 2026 also earnable with a private charger. It's the unit in which fuel suppliers' annual obligation is settled.
• HBE (hernieuwbare brandstofeenheid, renewable fuel unit). The predecessor in the old version of the scheme, expressed in energy (gigajoules) rather than CO₂. Businesses with public or commercial charging infrastructure earned these for years; private individuals could not take part. If you find articles about "HBEs for chargers" online, they describe that old system.
• GvO (garantie van oorsprong, guarantee of origin). A different registry altogether: GvOs prove electricity was generated renewably and sit behind your energy supplier's "green power" label. They have nothing to do with transport and earn you nothing extra as a home charger.

In short: GvOs cover the origin of electricity, HBEs were the old transport unit, EREs are the current one — and the only one a private individual earns from directly.

How much does it earn per year?

Roughly: €0.10 to €0.14 net per kWh. What that means per year depends on how much you charge at home:

In How much do you earn charging at home? we work through these examples step by step. Or skip the theory and calculate your own earnings.

A year of home charging in practice

Take a household with one electric car, 15,000 km per year, charging almost exclusively at home: about 3,000 kWh per year, or roughly 750 kWh per quarter.

Each quarter those sessions yield around 250 EREs (750 × 0.33). At the mid price that is about €120 gross per quarter; after the 20% service fee, about €97 net remains. Four quarters later the counter reads almost €400 net — roughly two months of free home charging, if you net it off against your electricity costs.

An interesting detail: it doesn't matter when you charge. Night tariff, sunny afternoon, dynamic off-peak hours — the ERE formula only counts kWh. Smart charging during cheap hours cuts your costs while the ERE payout keeps running.

Who qualifies?

The conditions at a glance:

1. A private charging point — at home, on your own property. Public chargers are already registered by their operator; fast charging on the road doesn't count for you.
2. A charger with a built-in MID meter. The NEa requires charged kWh to be measured by a certified meter inside the charging point itself. Many recent models have one on board; see which chargers have a MID meter or run the charger check for your model.
3. Your own grid connection (EAN). Your EAN code identifies your connection and can be registered with one registration service provider per calendar year.

Businesses, homeowner associations (VvEs) and installers with charging points can take part too — more on our business page.

How to join (through a registration service provider)

Private individuals cannot register with the NEa directly; it runs through a registration service provider ("inboekdienstverlener"). The provider registers your charge sessions in the NEa registry, sells the certificates and pays you out. In practice:

1. Create an account — free, takes a few minutes.
2. Sign the mandate — this authorises the provider to register your sessions as EREs and sell them on your behalf. A registration contract legally runs for at least a calendar year and can be cancelled annually after that.
3. Connect your charger — with us, through your charger brand's official integration. Sessions are collected automatically; no meter readings or photos to submit.
4. Receive your payout — we sell the EREs and pay out every quarter, minus the service fee.

What to look for when choosing a provider — fees, contract term, cancellation — is covered in Comparing ERE registration providers. Switching from another provider? Read how switching works.

From charge session to payout: the route your kWh travels

What exactly happens between plugging in and money landing in your account? The whole chain, step by step:

1. You charge. The MID meter in your charger records the session in an assured way: how many kWh, when, on which charging point.
2. The session is collected. Through the integration with your charger brand we fetch the session data automatically — including the original measurement data, which we store unmodified for later verification.
3. Validation and conversion. Every session is checked (does the meter qualify, does the charging point match, is there no overlap with another registration?) and converted into EREs using the NEa formula.
4. Registration with the NEa. The validated sessions are entered into the NEa registry. From that moment your EREs officially exist.
5. Sale. The EREs are sold to parties with an annual obligation — fuel suppliers or traders buying on their behalf.
6. Payout. After the quarter ends you receive the proceeds, minus the service fee, in your bank account. Your dashboard shows what was registered and paid out per session.

For you, only step 1 is visible work — and you were doing that anyway. The rest runs automatically.

How is all this policed?

A system in which certificates are worth money stands or falls with oversight — and it is strict. As the regulator, the NEa maintains the registry, sets requirements for measurement and record-keeping, and can audit registrations down to the source.

Three hard safeguards apply:

• Assured measurement. Only kWh measured by a MID-certified meter inside the charging point qualify — no estimates, no app values, no manual meter readings.
• One registration per connection. Your EAN code can be registered with one registration service provider per calendar year, so the same kWh can never be claimed twice.
• Traceable records. The provider must be able to show where every registered kWh came from. That is why we store the original, unedited measurement data of every session — so every ERE is traceable to its source.

For you as a charger owner that is good news: the system is strict, but you notice none of it. The burden of proof sits with the provider, not with you.

Retroactive: sessions since 1 January count

The scheme applies to charge sessions from 1 January 2026. If you sign up later in the year, earlier sessions from that calendar year can be registered as well — provided your charger has recorded the history and the data meets the measurement requirements. Waiting doesn't necessarily cost you money, but signing up early is the safe option: registration is in place and everything runs automatically.

What does the scheme look like after 2026?

The Regeling energie vervoer is not a temporary campaign but structural climate policy, rooted in European directives on renewable energy in transport. The parameters, however — the renewable share, the fossil reference and the size of the annual obligation — are set anew each year. Expect the formula output per kWh and the market price to move annually.

What does that mean for you?

• The payout per kWh can rise or fall. A higher annual obligation means more demand for EREs; more registered charging points means more supply. Where that nets out, nobody knows — which is why we work with scenarios instead of promises.
• Parameter changes require nothing from you. New yearly values are applied automatically to new sessions; your registration simply continues.
• Joining early has an edge. The market is young: the number of registered private charging points is still small and the first years count in full. Sign up now and all of 2026 is monetised — including the sessions already on the meter.

Whenever changes to the scheme are announced, you'll find the explanation and the consequences in this help center.

Common misconceptions

• "It's a subsidy." No — it's a market. The government pays nothing; fuel suppliers buy certificates because the law obliges them to cut CO₂.
• "I get a fixed amount per kWh." No — proceeds move with the ERE market price. Any number you see upfront is indicative.
• "Every charger qualifies." No — without a built-in MID meter there is no registration. Check your model before counting on the income.
• "Green power earns more." No — the NEa uses a fixed national renewable percentage, whatever your energy contract.