Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) held a first exchange of views on the revision of the EU Regulation (347/2013) on trans-European energy networks (TEN-E) on Thursday 25 March.
Unsurprisingly, the interventions of the MEPs differed mainly on the issue of gas.
While the revision proposal put forward by the European Commission foresees excluding natural gas projects from the revised regulation (see EUROPE 12623/3, 12618/9) and, thus, ending the possibility for such projects to become eligible for EU financial support by integrating the list of ‘projects of common interest’ (PCIs), the Parliament’s rapporteur on the dossier, Zdzisław Krasnodębski (ECR, Poland), appeared to be opposed to this idea.
Like Paolo Borchia (ID, Italian), he felt that the gas market was not yet finalised and that it would therefore be premature to exclude gas projects from the regulation.
“We should perhaps consider including strong transitional arrangements to ensure the completion of the gas market”, he said.
Markus Pieper (EPP, Germany) said that excluding gas would mean running the risk of not being able to “enter the low-carbon era” and of suffering energy shortages.
For Claudia Gamon (Renew Europe, Austria), on the other hand, the exclusion of natural gas should be the Parliament’s “priority” in order to maintain the level of ambition displayed by the Commission.
“The Commission made the right decision in saying no to fossil fuels”, agreed Erik Bergkvist (S&D, Sweden).
While she welcomed the “undeniable steps (of the Commission) to achieve the Green Deal with this revision proposal”, Marie Toussaint (Greens/EFA, France), for her part, felt that the sustainability criteria and the categories of projects proposed should be reviewed. And to state: “Infrastructure that is not 100% renewable should no longer be financed by European public money”.
As Director for Green Transition and Energy Systems Integration in the Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy (DG ENER), Catharina Sikow-Magny, for her part, stressed that, according to the institution’s analyses, the EU’s gas network will be finalised around 2022, or possibly 2023, when the few ongoing projects already financed are completed.
Governance
Several MEPs also raised the issue of governance, i.e. the selection procedure for CIPs provided for in the regulation.
While they generally welcomed the proposal to strengthen the role of the EU Agency for the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), Mr Bergkvist, Ms Toussaint and Michael Bloss (Greens/EFA, Germany) called for more transparency.
In particular, the two Greens/EFA MEPs argued that the energy network development scenarios (TYNDP) should be developed by an independent scientific body rather than by the European networks of transmission system operators for gas and electricity (ENTSO-Gand ENTSO-E). (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)