Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
7/3/2014
The European Investment Bank now expects to name the winners of a second round of funding to be provided under the New Entrants Reserve 300 program in mid-July, Kerstin Lichtenvort, team leader on NER300 in the Directorate-General for Climate Action said during a briefing at the European Union’s Sustainable Energy Week event in Brussels. The EIB had been expected to name the winners by the end of June, as outlined in program documents. Lichtenvort did not say at this week’s briefing why the EIB is taking additional time to make its decision.
The EIB announced the completion of the second and final round of emissions allowance sales under the NER 300 program in mid-April, reportedly raising approximately €548 million from the sale of 100 million allowances. The first 200 million allowances were sold from 2011 to 2012 and generated €1.5 billion in funding. Of that, €1.2 billion was awarded to 23 renewables projects. At the onset of the NER300 program, it was hoped that the funding scheme would spur up to 12 large-scale CCS demonstration projects across Europe. A draft award decision released in early June said that the White Rose project, a CCS project run by British utility Drax, is slated to receive the maximum 15 percent, or €300 million, of the total funds raised by NER300. White Rose would be the first CCS project to receive funding under that scheme.
White Rose would become Europe’s first CCS plant, a 426 megawatt coal burning facility located in Yorkshire. The plant is being managed by the Capture Power Ltd consortium, made up of BOC Group and Alstom SA. At the close of the allowance sales the project was the only remaining CCS project eligible for the scheme. Changes to the draft seem unlikely as no member state voted against the measure and it passed with only one abstention.
