Low carbon energy projects to benefit from €2 billion funding

“The European Investment Bank is pleased to support future investment in low-carbon demonstration projects. Successful completion of monetisation of carbon allowances under the NER300 scheme will help both carbon capture and storage schemes and innovative renewable energy projects across Europe reach a commercial scale. We will continue to work closely with the European Commission to ensure that the best applicants can be awarded proceeds raised from the ground-breaking NER300 scheme, ” said European Investment Bank Vice President Jonathan Taylor.

“The NER300 is a new path taken a few years ago to support large scale demonstration projects. We will need more of this type of innovation support in the transition to a low-carbon economy. I am glad that the European Investment Bank has joined us in this innovative work and I commend them for having done an excellent job in monetising allowances,” said Commission Climate Action Director General Jos Delbeke.

The European Investment Bank, acting on behalf of the European Commission, started to sell the first tranche of €200m of the EU allowances covered by the NER 300 scheme on 5 December 2011. More than €1.5bn was raised during the first phase of sales that ended in September 2012. From this €1.2bn was awarded to 23 projects out of 79 applications examined.

Monetization of the last 100 million EU allowances resumed in mid-November, 2013 and ended on 11 April, 2014. As outlined in the final monthly monetization report published on EIB’s website, gross proceeds from the second phase of sales represented €548 million. Monthly sales over the five month second phase averaged around 20 million EU allowances and reflected both the number of trading days and overall market liquidity. The majority of EU allowances were sold as direct screen trades, 99m EU allowances and 1m EU allowances were cleared as over-the-counter transactions. No further sales will take place under the NER300 initiative now that the full volume has been reached.

The European Investment Bank supports the NER300 Initiative as an agent of the European Commission fulfilling two separate roles. Firstly, appraising projects that have been submitted by member states and are seeking funding from the programme and secondly through monetisation of allowances.

For the second phase a total of 33 project applications were received by the European Investment Bank by July 2013 and these have since been examined in detail. The European Commission is expected to announce details of awards to successful projects later this year.

The EIB is the long-term lending institution of the European Union owned by its member states. It makes long-term finance available for sound investment in order to contribute towards EU policy goals.

More information on the NER300 initiative and the Bank’s involvement is available here.

The final monthly report detailing NER300 sale by the EIB is available here.