04/10/2016

NER 300 at Wind Europe Summit 2016

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The Wind Europe Summit 2016 took place from 27 to 29 September 2016 in Hamburg. The Summit was co-organised with the fair WindEnergy Hamburg. Both events brought together more than 30 0000 visitors, more than 1200 exhibitors with conference participants from both industry, research, and the public sector. This year, the JRC and project sponsors presented the wind energy projects funded under the NER 300 programme at the conference in a parallel event on "Funding innovative low-carbon energy demonstration projects: the NER 300 programme". Highlights from the following projects were presented and discussed with the audience:

The NER 300 programme is one of the world's largest programmes for the support of innovative low-carbon technologies. It supports first-of-a-kind, commercial-scale projects of both renewable energy (RES) and carbon capture and storage (CCS). The NER 300 programme is an essential instrument in the EU climate and energy policy because:

It bridges the gap between R&D and commercialisation by funding first-of-a-kind projects
It provides 2.1 billion euros to fight climate change now
It reinforces the EU's competitiveness by supporting low-carbon technologies, in which the EU enjoys global technological leadership
It increases the EU's security of supply by focusing on indigenous sources of energy

More information on the conference can be found here.

Background

NER 300 is a large European funding programme for innovative low-carbon energy demonstration projects. Its name indicates that its funds do not come from the EU budget, but are generated by the sale of 300 million emission allowances of the new entrants' reserve (NER) set up for the third phase of the EU emissions trading system. The programme supports a wide range of innovative CCS and RES technologies.

NER 300 bridges the gap between R&D and commercialisation by funding first-of-a-kind projects. In total, it provides 2.1 billion euros of funding but will leverage roughly 2.7 billion euros of private investments. It aims at boosting the deployment of innovative low-carbon technologies, where the EU still enjoys a global technological leadership, and as a result will contribute to the creation of thousands of jobs.

Under the first call for proposals 20 renewable energy projects were awarded (December 2012), whereas 18 RES projects and 1 CCS project were selected for funding under the second call (awarded in July 2014). The projects are now moving towards implementation, with three already operational – the Italian bioenergy BEST project, the German bioenergy VERBIOSTRAW project and the Swedish wind WINDPARK BLAIKEN project.

The results of both calls for proposals are available here.

Knowledge sharing

Knowledge sharing requirements are built into the programme as a tool to lower risks in bridging the transition to large-scale production of innovative RES and CCS deployment. The goals of knowledge sharing are – amongst others: to de-risk CCS and RES with regard to scaling up to commercial size; to accelerate the deployment of CCS and innovative RES; and to increase the undertaking of, and confidence in, CCS and RES by the wider public.

For these reasons, project sponsors are obliged to submit annually to the European Commission the relevant knowledge (RK) gained during the implementation of their project. The European Commission assesses the submitted RK with a view to establishing whether the project has adequately complied with its knowledge sharing obligations and will disseminate relevant knowledge.

Programme management and implementation

The European Commission is responsible for the overall management of NER 300. The Commission draws on the expertise of the European Investment Bank to evaluate proposals submitted by Member States, to sell NER allowances, and to manage the revenues and the disbursement of funds.

DG CLIMA is in charge of managing the NER 300 programme. The JRC supports DG CLIMA in the implementation of the NER 300 knowledge sharing process, including the assessment and dissemination of RK from projects.