The Commission said with the bulk of the project selection work completed for the first call for proposals, the technical document takes stock of progress and includes preliminary lists of candidate and reserve projects that could be awarded co-funding.
The funding to be available for the first call, would allow about three carbon capture and geological storage projects and 16 renewable energy projects to be co-funded.
Projects in more than half of the member states are likely to be supported, including a number of them in economic and fiscal difficulty at present.
The exact amount of funding available, however, will depend on the amount raised through the sale of the first 200 million allowances from the new entrants’ reserve of the EU emissions trading system.
The sales, which are being undertaken by the European Investment Bank, are under way and will be concluded in early October.
By end June 2012, the EIB had sold about 140 million allowances for delivery in December 2013, which raises raises about € 1.14bn.
The Commission calls for the member states to confirm the projects and national co-funding in early October in a bid to finalise its funding decisions by the end of 2012.
The program intends to support a wide range of CCS and renewable energy (RES) technologies, the latter including bioenergy, concentrated solar power, photovoltaics, geothermal, wind, ocean, hydropower, distributed renewable management categories.
In May 2011, a total of 79 project proposals, including 13 CCS and 66 RES proposals from 21 member states, were submitted to the EIB for further assessment and the total amount of funding requested was €11.8bn.
