EUROPEAN COMMISSION
PRESS RELEASE
Brussels, 18 December 2013
State aid: Commission consults on draft rules for state
support in energy and environmental field
The European Commission is inviting comments on a proposal for revised State aid
guidelines for assessing public support projects in the field of energy and the environment.
This revision is part of a broader initiative to modernise EU State aid rules. The
Commission proposes to extend the scope of the existing guidelines beyond the
environmental field into the energy area and to clarify and simplify the assessment of
state aid measures. Comments can be submitted until 14 February 2014.
Commission Vice President in charge of competition policy Joaquín Almunia said: "Welldesigned public support measures can make a key contribution to achieving the EU's
energy and climate objectives for 2020 and strengthening cross-border energy flows, thus
ensuring that European companies and consumers have access to more affordable energy.
Our proposal of a new EU framework for state aid aims at supporting Member States'
efforts towards these goals while avoiding any waste of taxpayers' money and distortions
of competition in the EU internal market. I am looking forward to receiving feedback from
stakeholders on this draft, so that the Commission can adopt revised guidelines in the first
semester of 2014."
The proposed guidelines would facilitate the decarbonisation of energy supply and the
integration of the EU internal energy market. With an increasing penetration and
decreasing costs of renewable energy, state aid should gradually move to a more market
friendly support of renewable energy in the form of market premiums or certificate
schemes. The former provides producers with a supplement on top of the wholesale price,
the latter establishes a market for tradable certificates between producers and suppliers of
renewable energy. This should allow renewable energy to integrate and play its role in the
electricity market and new forms of renewable energy to develop.
In recent years, the financing of renewable support measures has led in many Member
States to an increase of electricity costs which affects the competitiveness of energy
intensive users and risks leading to carbon leakage due to the relocation of production
outside the EU. The draft Guidelines would therefore allow the burden for energy intensive
users to be reduced, while putting in place safeguards to limit the distortions of
competition that such selective support is bound to trigger and to avoid subsidy races
between Member States.
Since a modern infrastructure is crucial for an integrated energy market and for achieving
the EU's climate and energy targets, the Guidelines include for the first time rules for
assessing infrastructure support. Accordingly, aid to infrastructure should be focused on
projects improving cross-border energy flows and promoting infrastructure in Europe's less
developed regions.
IP/13/1282
The draft guidelines also include rules on state aid to secure generation adequacy. Indeed,
some EU countries plan to introduce so-called "capacity mechanisms" to encourage
producers to build new generation capacity or prevent them from shutting down existing
plants. Such support would be allowed only if additional energy infrastructure or
alternative measures - such as a more responsive demand side or electricity storage cannot address concerns about a sufficient flexible generation capacity. However, such aid
should not unduly favour national generation or particular technologies, in order to limit
the risks of strong distortions of competition and environmental harm.
The new rules would also contribute to the modernisation of state aid control by providing
a simpler and more consistent framework for the assessment of state aid measures.
The Commission proposes to exempt certain categories of aid from prior scrutiny under
the state aid rules by including them in the General Block Exemption Regulation. This
would include for example public support to clean up or remediate contaminated sites, aid
to promote district heating and public loans to improve the energy efficiency in buildings.
Exempted measures may cover up to 40% of the public expenditure in the energy and
environmental field and will therefore significantly simplify the granting by Member State
and local authorities of support measures with a limited potential for distorting
competition.
The full text of the draft guidelines is available at
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/consultations/2013_state_aid_environment/index_en.h
tml
Background
The existing State aid Guidelines on Environmental Protection entered into force in 2008
and cover the period until end 2014. They include assessment criteria for State aid
measures in 12 different areas, for example, on improving environmental performance
beyond or in the absence of compulsory EU standards and on support to waste
management. Some of the measures relate to energy to the extent that they serve
environmental protection and climate objectives such as support to renewable energy
sources and energy savings. Member States have applied the existing guidelines in
particular to grant support to renewable energy production including for biofuels, to
remediate contaminated sites and to support the environmental performance beyond or in
the absence of standards.
Contacts :
Antoine Colombani (+32 2 297 45 13, Twitter: @ECspokesAntoine )
Marisa Gonzalez Iglesias (+32 2 295 19 25)
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