Heavy agenda for the Energy Council (3 December 2012): renewables, offshore oil and gas safety and internal energy market

Next week, on 3 December 2012, the energy ministers of the EU Member States will hold a Council meeting. The following topics are on the agenda:

1 - adoption of Council conclusions on renewable energy.

Based on the Communication "Renewable Energy: a major player in the European energy market" adopted in June 2012, the Council conclusions should set out as priorities: 

* the opening of the internal electricity market, and notably: securing market arrangements for the integration of an increasing number of renewable electricity generators; assessing market distortions at national level "in close cooperation" with the Commission services

* better market integration of RES, including non-binding guidance from the Commission on support schemes reform, and the phase-out of environmentally and economically harmful subsidies.

* cooperation and trade, which cover, on the first hand an extended use of the cooperation mechanisms and with the active help of the Commission, and, on the second hand, the development of international cooperation at bilateral and multilateral level.

* infrastructure and consumers, by the promotion of grid infrastructures, storage, back-up capacity and better operation solutions, more intelligent metering as well. Decentralised generation and "consumers-producers" must be better integrated.

* technology innovation and sustainability is essential and R&D n renewable energy technologies must be continued. Marine energy, smart grid and relationship to new IT technologies are relevant areas of research.

The Council should most probably invite the Commission to:

* present non-binding guidance on the further improvement of national support schemes as well as guidance on the implementation of the cooperation mechanisms;

* prepare discussion on post-2020 perspectives for renewable energy sources;

* assess costs and price effects on final consumers and effect on the competitiveness of individual Member States' economy as regards the efforts to boost renewable energy sources;

* start discussing and propose "in appropriate time" amendments to Directive 2009/28/EC.

2 - follow-up to the 2011 February European Council's conclusions on energy, and exchange views on the progress so far;

3 - the Commission will present its freshly released communication on "Making the internal energy market work";

4 - discuss the state of play of negotiations on the proposal for a regulation on safety of offshore oil and gas activities, after that the trialogue between the Council, European Parliament and the Commission took place on 29 November 2012. See last post of the proposal on this blog here. The vote in first reading by the European parliament committee is expected for 21 February 2013, and in plenary for 12 March 2013. 

The main topics currently discussed are:

* the choice of legal instrument, i.e. regulation or directive. The proposal has been redrafted from a regulation to a directive, and only few parties still favour a regulation. 

* delegations are still discussion the opportunity of inserting, as a principle, the public participation relating to planned offshore oil and gas exploration in the text of the future legislative act instead of inserting it in the environmental legislation.

* scope of the liability for environmental damage. Some delegations propose to expand the scope of the liability regime, i.e. not limiting it to environmental liability but also to other types of liability.

* Delegations have intensively discussed the role of "the competent authority" which raised "serious concerns". The Council reports that delegations seem to agree on a functional independence "as a minimum", and that the resources set for the authority must be proportional to the size of the national sector. The topic remains open.

* For oil and gas operations conducted outside the EU, only Member States which carry out these operations under their own jurisdiction must be concerned, i.e. mandatory reporting on major accidents by companies based in the EU

* Transboundary effects are dealt with in a separate chapter. It relates mainly to the interaction between Member States with and without offshore petroleum activities.

* Limitation to the scope of transposition. Although the legislative act will apply to all Member States, the states which do have a coastal line but do not want to exploit offshore petroleum resources under their jurisdiction will be bound to only transpose the provisions on emergency preparedness and response, and on penalties.

Picture credits: 3175th TTE (Energy) Council  meeting, 15 June 2012(c) The Council of the European Union