The European Commission opened a public consultation on Monday 27 March – to run until 17 June – on the third list of energy infrastructure projects of common interest (PCIs).
Regulation 347/2013 on guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructure identifies nine priority corridors and defines a procedure and criteria for a project to become a project of common interest and be eligible for Community financial support under the Connecting European Facility (CEF) whose list is updated every two years.
Identification of PCIs is based on a regional approach and is carried out by regional groups made up of representatives of the Commission, competent ministries, national regulatory authorities and the gas and electricity transmission system operators and project promoters, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for electricity and gas (ENTSO-E and ENTSO-G) and the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER).
Project promoters submit the electricity and gas project proposals for which they want to obtain PCI status to the regional groups for assessment.
The regional groups then evaluate the projects against the general and specific criteria as defined in the regulation assessing especially the contribution of the projects to market integration, sustainability, security of supply and competition.
To be eligible, projects must be able to demonstrate significant benefits for at least two member states, increase diversification of sources and supply routes and end the isolation of certain member states, and help reduce CO² emissions.
The assessment will be carried out in the coming months and the regional groups will decide on the regional PCI lists in summer 2017.
The first PCIs were selected in 2013, and the list was subsequently updated in November 2015 (see EUROPE 11433).
CEF funding of €5.35 billion has been allocated to trans-European energy infrastructure projects for the 2014-2020 period.
Under the CEF-Energy, funding of €647 million was allocated to 34 PCIs in 2014, €366 million to 35 PCIs in 2015 and €707 million to 27 PCIs in 2016. Funding of €444 million was allocated to 18 PCIs in February of this year (see EUROPE 11728). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)