Brussels, 08/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of Auditors (ECA) reveals that “improvements are needed” in the way in which European regional development funds (ERDF) and cohesion funds are used in the renewable energies sector. Although EU-funded projects have delivered reasonable outputs, energy production has not met expectations.
For the 2007-2013 programming period, €4.7 billion was earmarked to support renewable energy production as part of cohesion policy funding. The aim is to help meet the 20% energy reduction target by the end of the decade, according to the objectives set out in the EUROPE 2020 strategy. The ECA has analysed 24 ERDF- and cohesion-funded projects using biomass, photovoltaic energy, solar thermal and wind power in Malta, Austria, Poland, Finland and the United Kingdom.
Overall, the ECA believes that the projects achieved what they set out to do and merited funding. The projects did not incur any surcharges or suffer any delays. On the other hand, only a third of them achieved the energy production targets that had been set. The ECA puts this down to the fact that the cost effectiveness was not a priority during project completion and European funds had only had limited EU added value.
Ladislav Balko, the ECA member responsible for the report concluded: “The EU Member States have set ambitious renewable energy goals that can be supported significantly through EU money only if improvements in the management of the expenditure programmes are made”.
To attain this goal, the ECA recommends that the Commission pay greater attention to cost effectiveness, avoiding dead-weight. It also recommends the definition of production targets and more appropriate selection criteria. To this end, it suggests the creation of a database which would also serve as a basis for project assessment. The ECA also argues that the electricity produced from renewable energies should be better incorporated into electricity networks. (MD)