Esegui ricerca
12 March 2010

Supporting renewable energies: The 'transition' schemes

Aumenta dimensioni testoDiminuisci dimensioni testo
As most renewable energies are still more expensive than fossil fuels, a variety of support schemes have been put in place to accelarate their uptake and meet the EU's goal of sourcing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020

Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act, adopted in 2000, established a model for feed-in tariffs that has inspired the development of support schemes for renewable energy in many countries.

In accordance with a 2001 EU directive on renewable electricity, the European Commission published a report in 2005 assessing the support mechanisms that different member states have deployed for electricity from renewable sources, releasing a follow-up report in 2008.

The EU executive decided against proposing an EU-wide framework for support schemes, arguing that harmonisation would be premature and would disrupt the market.

In January 2007, the Commission published a Renewable Energy Roadmap, calling for a mandatory target to satisfy 20% of Europe's energy demand from renewable sources by 2020. The target was endorsed by EU leaders in March 2007.

The EU-wide 20% target was later translated into individual targets for each member state, laid down in a new Renewables Directive adopted in April 2009. Support schemes remain a national prerogative under the revised directive.

(EurActiv)

Read more

youris.com provides its content to all media free of charge. We would appreciate if you could acknowledge youris.com as the source of the content.