The European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, regretted the lack of sufficient prior sustainability assessment of the gas projects included in the European Union’s fourth list of ‘Projects of Common Interest’ (PCIs) on Tuesday 17 November in the conclusions of her inquiry opened on 13 February (see EUROPE 12426/14).
“It is regrettable that gas projects were included on previous PCI lists, without having their sustainability properly assessed. This meant that it was not possible to rank them to identify the most sustainable ones”, the Ombudsman said.
Initiated following a complaint from the NGO Food&Water Action Europe, the investigation aimed to examine the European Commission’s action regarding the sustainability assessment of gas projects on the fourth PCI list proposed by the institution (through a delegated act) and approved on 12 February by the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12424/6).
PCI status gives these projects certain advantages, including the fact that they are eligible for EU funding under the ‘Connecting Europe Facility’ (CEF), which had angered some MEPs and environmental NGOs (see EUROPE 12417/7).
In her conclusions, Ms O’Reilly points out that “the Commission had already acknowledged that the sustainability assessment of candidate gas projects had been suboptimal due to a lack of data and inadequate methodologies”.
Nevertheless, in the course of the inquiry, the Commission informed the Ombudsman that it was updating its methodology and that it would ensure that this update was in place before the adoption of the next PCI list scheduled for the last quarter of 2021.
According to the Commission, the update is expected to take into account, inter alia, the CO2 and methane balance, as well as the impacts in terms of efficiency, in the assessment of projects.
The institution also aims to take into account the expected impact of the infrastructure on the overall greenhouse gas intensity of energy production in a given Member State and the emissions related to the operation of the infrastructure itself.
Therefore, the Ombudsman considered that no further inquiries were justified at this stage.
Welcoming the Ombudsman’s findings, Andy Gheorghiu, Policy Advisor at Food&Water Action Europe, deplored the fact that the Commission “still plans to work with ENTSOG” (European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas), whose “biased assessment is at the very heart of the problem” in forming the next lists.
In addition, he called for “a more rigorous and independent sustainability test” for future PCIs.
See the conclusions: https://bit.ly/2HesfdV (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)