EU

After a year of negotiations, the EU has finally agreed to use allowances from the region’s emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) worth €6 billion to support carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration and renewable energy projects.

The scheme will see 300 million allowances for the 2013-2020 period allocated to the European Investment Bank (EIB), which at a carbon price of €20 a tonne, are likely to raise a total of €6 billion when sold.

The funds will be ploughed into CCS and renewable energy projects, with each member state allowed to host a maximum of two projects.

The main focus of the investment is likely to be CCS, with hopes for 12 large-scale demonstration projects to be up and running by 2015.

North West Liberal Democrat Euro-MP Chris Davies, who proposed the scheme, says that the UK is likely to get support for up to three CCS demonstration projects.

He says the UK is ideally placed for CCS development with large coal reserved and suitable storage sites in the oil and gas fields of the North Sea.

Davies criticised the length of time it has taken to approve the scheme, however.

“Europe says it wants to lead the world in the development of ‘green’ technology but we will only do that if we speed up our decision-taking process,” he commented.

For further information:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/emission/index_en.htm
www.winwithchris.org.uk/news/2010/Feb/cleancoalvictory.html

Related stories:
EU confirms €1.5 billion funding for carbon capture and offshore wind projects (10-Dec 2009)
EU identifies carbon capture projects to share €1.05 billion (9-Oct 2009)
UK launches £3.5 million study of carbon storage potential (9-Oct 2009)
Norway joins forces with UK and EU on carbon capture and storage (1-Jun 2009)