The European Commission will review and update the EU State Aid framework for energy and environment by the end of 2021.
EGEC Geothermal, together with Ocean Energy Europe, ESTELA and EUREC, outlined the main recommendations that would strengthen the EU’s technological expertise and deliver an effective state aid support for innovative renewable energy technologies.
The propositions outlined in the joint statement are essential to boost investments in key pre-commercial technologies to achieve the EU’s 2030 and 2050 energy and climate targets.
The key recommendations focus on:
- Strengthening support for technology-specific tenders: The current guidelines favour a “technology-neutral” approach and fail to reflect the reality on the ground, which is that Member States routinely use the available derogations to run tenders that are technology-specific. All competitive bidding processes need to be differentiated according to the technical characteristics of each technology (cost, size, risk profile, load factor, project lead time, ability to provide system services, dispatchability etc).
- Exempting demonstration projects from the notification requirement: Pre-market technologies have a higher risk factor, which, when combined with their capital-intensive nature, requires additional State Aid support. Technology and project developers are often small and medium companies, research institutes and universities with limited resources. Furthermore, demonstration projects are usually small in scale, so they do not distort competition. Timely access to State Aid to advance the EU’s know-how in renewable innovative technologies and bridge the gap between R&I stage and commercialisation is a vital component to decarbonise Europe.
Read the full statement on state aid
SAVE THE DATE > 30 March 2021 – Joint event “Effective state aid support for innovative renewable energy technologies”
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