In a report adopted on Thursday 1 March, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) said synergies between the policy aiming to boost the production and use of renewable energy and rural development are insufficiently realised.
“Funding for rural development can play a role in achieving the EU and national renewable energy targets, but rural areas should benefit where support for renewable energy has come from rural development funds”, said Samo Jereb, the ECA member responsible for the report. In his view, the European Commission “has not provided sufficient clarification or guidance on this”. The result is that, while most of the projects visited in the course of the audit delivered positive results economically and environmentally, member states also funded projects which had little beneficial impact on rural areas.
A further criticism made by the ECA was that bioenergy is not synonymous with sustainable energy. The sustainability of bioenergy depends on how the biomass is produced and used. Safeguard measures are insufficient (due to weak sustainability criteria), even in the current revision of the renewable energy directive (see EUROPE 11929), which could lead to increased use in the long run of unsustainable biomass, particularly for rural areas, the report underlines.
Furthermore, the ECA says that there are no comprehensive data available on the planned expenditure on renewable energy investments for the 2014-2020 programming period under the European agricultural fund for rural development (EAFRD). Overall, EU renewable energy policy could be more explicit in establishing the conditions for linking renewable energy successfully to rural development.
The report recommends: - better account to be taken of the needs of rural areas in the preparation of the future renewable energy policy; - improved safeguards against unsustainable biomass supply for the purposes of generating energy; - support to be granted only to viable projects which present clear sustainable rural development benefits, particularly when the funding is provided through the EAFRD. The report in English may be found at: http://bit.ly/2tcQxNw. (Original version in French)