EU to invest €873m in energy infrastructure

EU member states agreed on the European Commission’s (EC) proposal to invest €873 million in key European energy infrastructure projects, the EC announced.

The EU selected 17 electricity and gas projects for EU funding which will come from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the European support program for trans-European infrastructure.

Of the 17 projects selected for funding, eight are in the electricity sector with €680 million of EU support and nine in the gas sector with €193 million.

The EC also noted that four out of these 17 projects relate to construction works with funding of €723 million and €150 million has been allocated for 13 feasibility studies.

The largest ever CEF-Energy grant to be awarded will be in the electricity sector with a grant of €578 million. The project involves the construction of the Biscay Gulf France-Spain interconnection that will help better integrate the Iberian Peninsula into the internal electricity market.

This new link will nearly double the interconnection capacity between both countries, increasing it from 2,800 megawatts (MW) to 5,000 MW, and will bring Spain closer to the 10 percent interconnection target from the current level of 6 percent, the EC noted.

The CEF already granted €647 million to 34 projects in 2014, €366 million to 35 projects in 2015 and €707 million to 27 projects in 2016.