In March 2007 the European Council approved the “Energy Policy for Europe” Action Plan which, inter alia, establishes a specific 20% target, to be achieved by 2020, for the penetration of renewable energy sources in primary energy production (PED). In January December 2008 the European Council approved the “Climate action and renewable energy package” to pursue the challenging objectives set out in the Action Plan. The CAREP includes Directive 2009/28/EC, in which individual Member States are assigned individual overall targets for the share of renewable energy sources in final energy consumption (FEC) in 2020 (FEC replaced PED, as a reference for calculating the penetration level, during the process of negotiation on the Directive).
The Directive introduces optional cooperation mechanisms between Member States which allow them to agree on the extent to which one Member State supports the energy production in another and on the extent to which the energy production from renewable sources should count towards the national overall target of one or the other. However, it does not aim at harmonising the way in which Member States support the development of renewable energy sources. In this respect Recital (25) of the Directive clarifies that the “Directive aims at facilitating cross-border support of energy from renewable sources without affecting national support schemes”. The current situation is therefore still characterised by a wide range of renewable support scheme across the EU.
The Workshop aims at analysing the experience of the different Member States in promoting renewable energies, assessing the advantages and disadvantages of the current variety of support schemes, in the context of the increasing integration of national market into an single internal energy market.
