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Climate action: Member States submit project proposals for renewable energy and clean technologies

78 proposals for large-scale demonstration projects involving innovative renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies have passed the Member State stage of the NER 300 programme and have been submitted to the European Investment Bank (EIB) under the EU's "NER 300" programme, the world's largest demonstration programme for such technologies.

The deadline for submissions was 9 May 2011. According to an initial screening of the project proposals by the EIB, applications for 13 CCS projects and 65 projects involving innovative renewable energy technologies have been submitted. .

A breakdown of the project proposals submitted by category is shown in the Annex.

Background: NER 300 Demonstration Programme
The NER 300 programme aims to fund at least eight CCS and at least 34 innovative renewable energy demonstration projects. The programme is so named because it will be funded from the sale of 300 million emission allowances held in the New Entrants Reserve (NER) of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS).

At the current carbon price, these allowances are worth 4-5 billion, but as project sponsors must also bring funding it is expected to leverage around the same amount in addition from private or other sources.

A first call for proposals was launched in November 2010. Project sponsors had to submit their funding applications to their respective Member State authorities by 9 February 2011. Member States then had until 9 May to check the eligibility of the projects submitted and to submit the projects they wished to support to the European Investment Bank (EIB).

The EIB has started financial and technical due diligence assessments, and aims to finalise the appraisal of proposed projects by 9 February 2012.

Next steps
Based on recommendations from the EIB, the Commission will consult the EU Climate Change Committee, in which all Member States are represented, check that Member States still support the projects they recommended, and prepare and issue award decisions.

The EIB will also sell the allowances, manage the revenues and hand them over to the Member States for disbursement to the projects. At least one project, and up to a maximum of three, will be funded per Member State.

The Commission intends to issue award decisions in the second half of 2012.

Annex
Number and type of project proposals submitted to the EIB:

Total number of CCS projects

13

Power generation: pre-combustion

3

Power generation: post combustion

6

Power generation: oxyfuel

2

Industrial applications demonstrating CCS on refineries, cement kilns, in iron and steel or aluminium production

2

Total number of renewables projects

65

Bioenergy

23

Concentrated solar power

9

Photovoltaics

4

Geothermal

3

Wind

15

Ocean

8

Distributed renewable management

3

Further information:

NER300:
http://ec.europa.eu/clima/funding/ner300/index_en.htm

MEMO/10/549

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