On Wednesday 14 October, the Commission announced that it had given its green light to German plans aiming to support four highly efficient cogeneration plants feeding the district heating networks in Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Munich, by allocating premiums to them.
The plants serving Berlin and Munich will receive a premium of 1.5 cent per kilowatt hour (kWh) for a maximum of 16,000 hours of operation.
The two other beneficiaries (in Düsseldorf and Cologne) will receive a premium of 3.4 cent/kWh (this higher premium reflects the investment costs) for a maximum of 30,000 load hours.
In line with the guidelines, this support takes the form of a premium on top of the market price of co-generated electricity fed into the public grid and is limited in time. The Commission found that the market premiums allow the plans to operate at times when they would not otherwise have been sufficiently profitable; this makes it possible to increase the operating hours and provides benefits in terms of CO2 emissions savings and primary energy savings.
Granting market premiums instead of applying fixed feed-in tariffs promotes the plants' integration into the energy market, ensures that they are not overcompensated and limits the distortion of competition caused by the public financing. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)