Imagine this: you come home in the evening, plug in your car and head inside. A few hours later, the battery is full. Until last year, that was the whole story. You paid for your electricity and that was it. Since 1 January 2026, things have changed. Every kilowatt-hour that flows through your home charger is now worth more than what you pay for it. That’s because of a regulation with a somewhat clunky name: emission reduction units, or EREs.
In this article, we’ll walk you through how the scheme works, what it earns you, and why it becomes even more interesting when you share your charging station.
The polluter pays, the electric driver receives
The idea behind EREs is actually very simple. Companies that put petrol and diesel on the market must demonstrate to the government that they contribute to cleaner transport. They do this by buying certificates. Those certificates are created where transport is already sustainable: at the charging station of electric drivers. The oil company pays, and the money goes to the person who charges their EV.
The system was set up by the Dutch Emissions Authority and follows European agreements on renewable energy. On 1 January 2026, the ERE replaced the old renewable fuel unit, and at the end of March 2026 the Senate gave final approval. Importantly, it’s not a subsidy. The money doesn’t come from the government but from the market. The European directive behind the scheme runs until 2030, so you can rely on it for the coming years.
As a private individual, you can’t sell certificates yourself. You need an accredited “inboekdienstverlener”: a company registered with the Emissions Authority that reads your charging data, converts it into certificates, and sells them for you. There are now more than a hundred of these, ranging from energy suppliers to specialised service providers.
What does it earn you?
There’s no fixed amount. The price of an ERE moves with supply and demand, and each service provider achieves a different price and charges a different commission. Roughly speaking, every home-charged kilowatt-hour in 2026 yields around 7 to 15 cents, depending on the market and the provider you work with. If you drive about 15,000 kilometres a year and mostly charge at home, you’re easily talking about a few hundred euros annually. Good to know: you can have all kilowatt-hours from 2026 registered retroactively.
To participate, your charger must meet a few requirements. It needs a certified MID meter to ensure accurate measurement. It must be connected to the internet so the data can be read. And you must be the owner of the electricity connection the charger is installed on. You choose one service provider per calendar year; switching halfway through can result in rejected registrations.
Why EREs and sharing your charger are a perfect match
Here’s where it gets interesting. For the scheme, it doesn’t matter whose car is plugged into your charger. The certificates belong to the connection, not the vehicle. If your neighbour charges at your place via ShareCharge for an afternoon, that electricity counts toward your EREs.
This means a shared charger earns you money in two ways. You receive the tariff you set for each charging session, and on top of that, the same kilowatt-hour generates EREs. A charger that’s used more often simply produces more certificates than one that sits idle most of the day.
Do you also have solar panels? Then the picture gets even better. Now that net metering is ending, you earn very little for feeding electricity back into the grid. If you use that solar power instead to charge someone else’s car, you earn from your tariff and from the certificates.
Get more out of every kilowatt-hour
The ERE scheme turns your charger into more than just a socket for your own car. Every kilowatt-hour that flows through it has value, whether you’re charging yourself or helping a neighbour.