In March 2007 the European Spring Council gave its support to an EU programme of up to twelve demonstration projects for carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) (the “CCS Programme”), to be implemented by 2015 at an estimated cost to the public purse of €6 to €10 billion. The CCS Programme was conceived and designed on the basis of recommendations by ZEP in 2007; in November 2008 ZEP presented its further recommendations to the European Commission on the broad guidelines for implementing the CCS Programme.

In December 2008 the European Parliament and the Council adopted the review of the Emissions Trading Directive (the “Directive”), which among its other provisions envisages the award of 300 million EU emission Allowances (“Allowances”) from the New Entrant Reserve (“NER” and “NER Pool”) to CCS and certain classes of renewable energy (“RES”) projects.

ZEP's recommendations for NER funding of CCS ( 745.52KB )