Innovative renewable energy demonstration projects and carbon capture schemes across Europe will benefit from more than €2 billion raised by sales of 300 million emission allowances.

The European Investment Bank has successfully completed sales under the NER 300 programme, one of the largest funding programmes for carbon capture and storage demonstration projects and innovative renewable energy technologies and a total of EUR 548 million has been raised during the second phase of sales.

Jonathan Taylor, European Investment Bank Vice President said:

“The European Investment Bank is pleased to support future investment in low-carbon demonstration projects. Successful completion of monetisation of carbon allowances under the NER300 scheme will help both carbon capture and storage schemes and innovative renewable energy projects across Europe reach a commercial scale. We will continue to work closely with the European Commission to ensure that the best applicants can be awarded proceeds raised from the ground-breaking NER 300 scheme.”  

The European Investment Bank, acting on behalf of the European Commission, started to sell the first tranche of 200 million of the EU allowances covered by the NER 300 scheme on 5 December 2011. More than €1.5 billion was raised during the first phase of sales that ended in September 2012. From this € 1.2 billion was awarded to 23 projects out of 79 applications examined.

Monetisation of the last 100 million EU allowances resumed in mid-November, 2013 and ended on 11 April, 2014. No further sales will take place under the NER300 initiative now that the full volume has been reached.

The European Investment Bank supports the NER300 Initiative as an agent of the European Commission fulfilling two separate roles. Firstly, appraising projects that have been submitted by member states and are seeking funding from the programme and secondly through monetisation of allowances.

For the second phase a total of 33 project applications were received by the European Investment Bank by July 2013, including one from the United Kingdom, which have since been examined in detail. The European Commission is expected to announce details of awards to successful projects later this year.