EUR40 million has been proposed for an 0.25 gigawatt (GW) wind farm near Aberdeen, and EUR150 million for developing an offshore wind grid in the North Sea that will provide wind power to Britain, Holland, Germany, Ireland and Denmark – both projects are already under development.

EC President Jose Manuel Barroso said that the spending package would help lift European Union countries out of recession.

We need to learn the lessons of the recent gas crisis and invest heavily in energy, Barroso said. The Commission is committed to working together with member states, all of which will benefit from our proposed measures, in revitalising the EU economy through investment in these key areas.

Jeff Chapman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association welcomed the announcement and said that he hoped it would be backed by further government support.

This is great news, but €250m isn’t enough to fund CCS on one plant. There needs to be additional funding from government and also perhaps contributions from developers, Jeff Chapman, said.

The UK government has already decided to fund one CCS demonstration plant in the UK, to be operational by 2014, but has not chosen the plant yet.

Chapman said that it would make sense for the government to award its competition funding to one of the projects likely to receive European Union funding.

While the UK CCS projects will focus on post-combustion capture, the European Union will also provide EUR250 million to an oxyfuel combustion plant at Compostella in Spain.

The EC package also includes EUR1.75 billion to improve gas and electricity interconnections between EU countries, including EUR100 million for electricity links between Ireland and Wales. Along with that, additional, EUR1billion is being made available to improve rural broadband connections across Europe.

The package has to be passed by the European Parliament before becoming law.

The package came as a statement of intention after the EC set out its proposals for a new global agreement to tackle climate change and how it could be financed.

European Union officials also called for the US and other developed countries to join its emissions trading scheme.