Brussels, 26/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission this week presented the first Community awards in favour of projects for the promotion of renewable energies development. The prizes were awarded to seven European projects in the context of a conference on "the "Campaign for Take-Off for Renewables", held from 23 to 25 October in Toulouse, in southern France. In the line of the strategy proposed by the European Commission in its White Paper on renewable energies in 1997, the aim of this campaign and of the Community prizes is to encourage public authorities to focus their public support programmes on European objectives and to complete or trigger off private investment.
The Award 2000 for renewable energies was presented to the following projects: 1) Best National Renewable Energy Partnership: Biogas from Waste and Agriculture (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark); 2) Best Regional Renewable Energy Partnership: Prosol Programme (Junta de Andalucia, Spain); 3) Best Industrial Renewable Energy Partnership: bioethanol programme - Repsol YPF (Cepsa - Abengoa, Spain); 4) "100 communities for 100% Renewable Energy" - Isolated areas: "The Danish renewable energy island concept" (Samso, Denmark); 5) 100 communities for 100% Renewable Energy: Rural areas: Changeover of power supply in the district of Luechow Dannenberg to RES within 10 years (Administrative District of Luechow-Dannenberg, Germany).
The Grand Prize went to a project under "100 communities for 100% Renewable Energy", presented by Malmö Bo01: Western Port of the City of Malmö - City of Malmö, Sweden. The Special Prize for the "most promising RE partnership" was attributed to "Diffusion campaign of the solar thermal systems with natural gas back-up", of Azienda speziale AMG, Italy.