25 Amendments of Lena KOLARSKA-BOBIŃSKA related to 2012/2259(INI)
Amendment 4 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Maintains that investment in, and the exploitation of, renewable and other low emission sources of energy will promote economic development, new innovations, and sustainable growth in the EU's regions and, moreover, will create jobs;
Amendment 8 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 – indent 1 (new)
Paragraph 1 – indent 1 (new)
- Having regard to the report on the role of EU cohesion policy in implementing the new European energy policy; (This citation should go before the first paragraph.)
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Emphasises that secure, affordable and environmentally sound energy provision is indispensable for the competitiveness of our regions and of European industry; emphasises, therefore, that the energy supply system needs to be overhauled and the share of RES increased in a manner that is cost- efficient and without prejudice to supply security;
Amendment 12 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Considers that EU regional policy has a key role to play in promoting renewable energy production on a Europe-wide scale; welcomes the fact that the cohesion and regional policy input intended to encourage renewable energy use has continued to expand step by step; considers it particularly important for the direction of Commission policy to be such as to enable the funding rate to be increased further in the coming period in balance with a shift towards a greater percentage of funding to be targeted at energy-efficiency projects;
Amendment 23 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Maintains that investment under Common Strategic Framework funds could be of great help in resolving the challenges for renewable energy; draws attention also to the importance of private – and first and foremost European – investment and of innovative financial instruments; without overlooking research and development projects supported under the Structural Funds, especially those carried out at grass- root level, points to the role of Horizon 2020 in the development of the European renewable energy sector, including renewables, and in the responses to specific territorial challenges; notes that regional and local authorities have a key role to play in deploying the most-needed innovations in the energy sector if the EU is to meet its renewables and energy efficiency targets and should have real opportunity to influence this goals;
Amendment 28 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. whereas the most of the current arrangements for energy generation from renewable sources take no account of geographical plant location criteria and fail to exploit cost advantages, thereby making the European energy turnaround unnecessarily costly;
Amendment 33 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Points out that increased renewable energy production will pose challenges to the serviceability of the existing energy infrastructure; points to the importance of both public and private funding where energy infrastructure investment is concerned; believes that, for example, ELENA assistance should support largesmall- scale and decentralised renewable energy investment projects to more useful effect and that the Intelligent Energy – Europe programme could be used to foster acceptance of renewable energyjoint renewables project between small rural communities;
Amendment 38 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4a. Considers, taking into account regional demands, that the Common Strategic Framework funding for renewables should focus primarily on the local distribution of the power/fuel produced and small-scale renewable projects;
Amendment 39 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4a. Notes that, in many Member States, RES already account for more than 20% of the energy market, while national rules on feed-in tariffs and preferential treatment are leading to distortions of competition;
Amendment 41 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 b (new)
Paragraph 4 b (new)
4b. Supports a multi-level governance and decentralised approach to energy policy and renewables, including, among other things, the Covenant of Mayors and the further development of the Smart Cities initiative as well as the promotion of the best solutions at regional and local level by means of information campaigns;
Amendment 44 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 c (new)
Paragraph 4 c (new)
4c. Notes that large-scale renewable energy projects often either focus on the transmission of this energy outside the region of its production or find that local grids do not have the capacity to absorb this intermittent energy;
Amendment 49 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Points to the importance of self- sufficiency in energy and to the major role of European renewable energy sources, including slowly renewable sources, for regional economies; points out that the efforts to replace fossilhigh carbon and imported energy with locally produced European renewable energy are important in the long term in order to meet the targetgoals set in the Energy Roadmap 2050 and the Europe 2020 strategy;
Amendment 52 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Calls for a review of the capacity payments envisaged or in place in some countries for conventional power stations to maintain baseload capacity, which may conflict with European competition rules; calls on Member States and energy producers, instead, to organise baseload groupings in cooperation with RES inside the internal market on the basis of free- market principles; asks the Commission to draw up a legal framework for the setting up of local groupings to secure baseload power;
Amendment 53 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Calls for the deployment of renewable sources of energy within the EU to be made more efficient by striving towards a system of EU-wide incentives for renewable sources, on which basis specific types of renewables would be deployed in those parts of the EU where they are most efficient, thereby lowering the cost of promoting them and guaranteeing the efficient allocation of funding;
Amendment 58 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Considers that local sustainable energy strategies have an essential role in terms of regional and social development, as they enhance the participation of regional players in renewableEuropean energy projects; notes that the Member States and regions have their own strengths as far as renewable energy sources are concerned and that, because of geographical differences, renewable energy policy cannot be exactly the same in every region; points out that bioenergy can do much to foster energy management, economic growth, and vitality, especially in sparsely populated regions and rural areas;
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G a (new)
Recital G a (new)
G a. whereas existing legal instruments on forest management set up a sufficient framework to provide the proof of sustainability of forest biomass produced within the European Union;
Amendment 64 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Maintains that effective renewable energy projects should not stop at the EU's internal borders, to say nothing of its external borders; draws attention to the importance of cross-border energy projects and takes the view that European regional cooperation programmes, as well as the IPA and the ENI, should be exploited to the full to help renewable energy to take off; also stresses that best practice should be shared and turned to account under those programmes; supports the use of cohesion and energy policy funds for cross-border projects with third partner countries and connections between national networks; stresses that bordering regions should be incorporated into the EU system as much as possible to ensure sustainable development on both sides of the border; stresses that such funding should be subject to the application of the EU energy market rules, including the third energy package;
Amendment 69 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Notes that the existence of numerous different schemes for promoting renewables in the Member States gives rise to considerable inefficiencies in cross-border electricity trading because it reinforces and indeed aggravates inequalities, thus working against completion of the internal energy market; stresses that this is a major blockage to the development of cross-border regional projects, which are subject to different renewables support regimes;
Amendment 78 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8 a (new)
Paragraph 8 a (new)
8a. Is convinced that only an EU-wide system for promoting RES will offer the most cost-effective framework in which their full potential can be realised; sees decisive advantages in a technology- neutral European market for renewables, in which producers will have to cover a pre-determined quota of their energy output from RES, and in which one of the ways of reaching that quota will be through the trading of certificates on a market established for that purpose; notes the evidence of experience in the Member States that, in order to ensure quotas are met, heavy fines must be imposed for failure to meet them;
Amendment 80 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8 b (new)
Paragraph 8 b (new)
8b. Notes the January 2013 adopted of the report on the role of EU cohesion policy in implementing the new European energy policy and ask the Commission to take it into account when drafting its renewables policy in regards to cohesion policy.
Amendment 81 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8 c (new)
Paragraph 8 c (new)
8c. Emphasises that the further development of renewables will entail permanent landscape change in the regions; points out that the only way to win public acceptance of renewables is through transparent planning, construction and licensing procedures, in which all the stakeholders are involved.
Amendment 150 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5 a. Acknowledges that there is a sufficient legal framework in the form of Regulation (EU) No 955/2010 of 20 October 2010 laying down the obligations of operators who place timber and timber products on the market to provide a proof that biomass within the European Union is produced sustainably and that no forest or environmental legislation related to sustainable forest management is breached; notes that any new legislation on sustainability of biomass used to generate renewable energy and produced within the European Union should take into account the existing legal framework and instruments that it provides;
Amendment 219 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)
Paragraph 10 a (new)
10 a. Notes that while currently cohesion policy energy funding is overwhelmingly spent on renewables, renewables are already supported by targeted EU and Member States schemes, including feed-in tariffs; notes that this raises questions of the collective impact of cohesion funding in relations to the development of renewables in individual regions; believes, therefore, a better balance must be reached by which a greater percentage of structural funding is targeted at energy efficiency projects;
Amendment 463 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 29
Paragraph 29
29. Is convinced that only an EU-wide system for promoting RES will offer the most cost-effective framework in which their full potential can be realised; sees decisive advantages in a technology- neutral European market for renewables, in which producers will have to cover a pre-determined quota of theiCalls for the deployment of RES within the EU to be made more efficient by striving towards a system of EU-wide incentives for renewable sources, based on a technology-neutral market exchange system of national certificates of origin, on which basis specific types of renewables would be deployed in those regions where they are most efficient, thereby lowering the cost of promoting them and guaranteeing the efficient allocation of funding; supports the creation of pre-determined national quotas for energy output from RES, and in which one of the ways of reaching that quota will be through the trading of certificates on a market established for that purposethe above market; notes the evidence of experience in the Member States that, in order to ensure quotas are met, heavy fines must be imposed for failure to meet them;
Amendment 493 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30
Paragraph 30
30. Calls on the Commission to bring forward, without delay, urgently a proposal for a European support system in which a market for renewable-energy certificates will make for EU-wide competition among the various technologies; calls on the Commission to adopted such a proposal no later than June 2013;