On 21 and 22 June, members of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) will hold voting sessions on the draft opinion from Marie Toussaint (Greens/EFA, France) on the revision of the EU regulation (347/2013) on trans-European energy networks (TEN-E). As the list of compromise amendments negotiated between the different political groups shows, the issue of gas-related infrastructure projects continues to be divisive.
This regulation, which dates from 2013, consists of a set of rules applicable to cross-border energy infrastructures and is being revised in order to better support the modernisation of these infrastructures and to contribute to the objectives of the European Green Deal.
To this end, the European Commission has proposed excluding natural gas infrastructure from the scope of the revised regulation, much to the displeasure of some MEPs, in particular those from the ECR and ID groups, a portion of the EPP, and some members of Renew Europe.
The Conservatives (ECR) and ID have thus proposed keeping natural gas projects within the scope of the regulation.
However, this proposal is unlikely to be adopted, as the other groups support an alternative compromise amendment on this point.
On the other hand, the outcome of the votes is less certain concerning other compromise amendments relating to new categories of infrastructure that can be linked to natural gas proposed by the committee: smart gas network projects; hydrogen projects; electrolysers (see EUROPE 12623/3, 12686/26).
Smart gas networks
A compromise amendment supported by the S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA, and The Left groups proposes, among other things, that the category for smart gas networks should only cover projects integrating renewable gases and hydrogen produced from electrolysers, in compliance with certain greenhouse gas emission reduction requirements.
The EPP and ECR groups, on the other hand, have tabled an alternative compromise amendment that not only does not exclude “low-carbon” gases, but also includes projects for ‘blending’ renewable gases with natural gas.
CO2 transport
While the European Commission’s revision proposal includes CO2 transport in the scope of the text, the ID and ECR groups propose extending this category to CO2 capture and storage.
A compromise amendment supported by the other five groups retains the European Commission’s approach, but specifies that “the capture rate of capturing equipment installed in industrial installations must be greater than 90%”.
Next steps
It should be noted that Parliament’s committee responsible for this dossier is the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). The vote in ITRE on the draft report by Zdzisław Krasnodębski (ECR, Poland) is scheduled for 15 July (see EUROPE 12697/14, 12695/8).
For its part, the EU Council reached a political agreement (‘general approach’) on Friday 11 June and is therefore ready to start interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogues’), despite the persistence of certain divisions between Member States (see EUROPE 12740/23).
See Ms Toussaint’s draft opinion: https://bit.ly/3gCRdmk and the compromise amendments: https://bit.ly/3gIPBGj (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)