A Hydropower Alliance was launched on Thursday 4 May, bringing together the main players in hydropower in Europe, representing an installed capacity of over 110 GW. The aim of this alliance is to develop a hydroelectric strategy on a European scale, as it recalls in a joint letter sent to the European Commission on Thursday 4 May.
The alliance partners therefore call for concrete policy actions, such as including hydropower in the list of strategic technologies of the Green Deal Industrial Plan and considering it in the discussions on the electricity market review.
Specifically, the Alliance calls for flexible hydropower generation and energy storage not to be capped by sub-marginal caps or other means, nor to be subject to mandatory fixed-price auctions under contracts for differences (‘CfD’) (see EUROPE 13141/1).
It then calls for a favourable EU-wide regulatory framework to treat hydropower in the same way as other renewable resources, for example in the Sustainable Financing Strategy, the electricity market design and the Renewable Energy Directive.
Present at the launch of the alliance, EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson stressed the importance of hydropower as “a crucial source of renewable electricity for Europe”. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)