Luxembourg, 26/11/2007 (Agence Europe) - While the European Commission on Thursday unveiled its new European strategic energy technology plan (SET-Plan) (EUROPE 9549), the European Investment Bank (EIB) has granted funding for the European energy project “NorNed”, which will see the Netherlands and Norway connected by the longest underwater electricity transmission cable in the world.
Torsten Gersfelt, Vice President of the EIB, and Mel Kroon, Chairman-Director of TenneT B.V. (the Dutch national electricity grid), signed a financing contract on 22 November for €140 million to fund the project. NorNed will create the connection using a 580 km HVDC hybrid bipolar underwater cable. The cable will cross the North Sea through Danish and German waters, linking Eemshaven (Netherlands) and Feda (Norway) and enabling the two countries' electricity grids to be connected. The promoters are the operators of the transmission grid operators in the Netherlands (TenneT B.V.) and Norway (Statnett S.F.). TenneT and Statnett will themselves invest a total of some €600 million in the project, which the two operators are mounting jointly. The EIB, which is also planning to loan a similar amount to Statnett, will finance around 50% in total of the costs of the NorNed project, which is on the list of Energy-TEN projects.
The development of trans-European networks (TENs) for energy, transport and telecommunications is one of the major priorities for the EIB, whose remit is to finance investments furthering the implementation of EU objectives. Promoting sustainable, competitive and secure sources of energy is also a key EU objective and another loan priority for the EIB. The Bank is the main source of financing for the trans-European networks (TENs), to which it has already devoted more than €93 billion, of which €10.4 billion has been specifically granted to energy networks. (O.L.)