Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-12-Speech-3-379"
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"en.20080312.25.3-379"2
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"Mr President, Martin Luther King had a dream. He dreamt of a society where the colour of your skin did not lead to discrimination. It was a dream that revolutionised America and the world. Today Europe has a dream, or rather a vision: to develop the energies of the future, not only in Europe but also beyond Europe, the vision of renewable energies playing a major role by the middle of this century, helping to avoid conflicts over the remaining oil and gas resources, mitigating climate change and ensuring that billions of people across the world have access to the energy that is out of their reach today.
As Parliament, we need stringent monitoring and evaluation with regular reports to this House and its Committee on Budgets and Committee on Budgetary Control, because we want to increase this Fund if possible over the next few years: to do that, we of course need the confidence of this House in the workings of the Fund.
Those are my initial comments, and I look forward to the debate with my fellow Members.
I think that the Commission, represented today by its environmental conscience, Mr Dimas, has every reason to be proud of this Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund (GEEREF). It is our assumption that within four or five years there will be EUR 500 million in this Fund, making it the world's largest fund for investment in renewables and energy efficiency.
These EUR 500 million will come in part from the public purse, with around EUR 80 to 150 million from the European budget, but also from the national governments' budgets. We have specific commitments currently from Germany and also from Norway.
What will this Fund achieve? The financial analysts who look in detail at flows of investment into individual renewable energy and energy efficiency projects have observed that it is difficult to attract risk capital for investments of less than EUR 10 million. This Fund will be geared particularly to these medium-sized projects up to EUR 10 million.
It will therefore be a 'fund of funds', which means that this Fund will not invest directly in wind farms in Morocco or solar energy systems in China, but will acquire shares in investment funds in Southern Africa, in Central Africa, in China, in Russia or in South America. The public purse will determine politically where the funding will go.
It will be attractive for private investors because the public purse will in effect cover all the investment risk, so that the returns on the investments – if these investments yield any returns, that is – will go first to private investors and only in the second phase will they go back into the public purse, and that of course provides a great deal of security for private investors.
We as parliamentarians have raised four or five points relating to this Fund. The first is also a specific question to Commissioner Dimas. At a time when biofuels are an extremely controversial issue, we as parliamentarians have taken the view that we must apply very strict criteria for any biomass or biofuel project investment from the Fund. It is not just that the environmental balance could be problematical; it would also pose an image problem for the Fund if its reputation were to be damaged by such investment. Once again, then, Commissioner, can you guarantee that the Commission will do its best to apply the strict criteria that are required?
The second issue of importance to us as parliamentarians – and I think this is especially true of those of us who are concerned with development – is that we want this Fund to make a significant contribution to overcoming energy poverty. We therefore need to apply the know-how of microfinancing institutions such as the Grameen Bank and others that are already implementing projects for the poorest of the poor, such as solar collectors or PV systems. We must involve these microfinancing institutions. My second question to you, Commissioner, is this: is the Commission willing, as the major public donor, to ensure that 20-25% of the funding will genuinely be utilised for this type of microproject through microfinancing arrangements?
Thirdly, we were afraid that if investing in China is becoming so easy, all the funding from GEEREF would flow in that direction. What we want, however, is a good geographical spread of investment and so we need the Commission's political commitment that funds will be provided for investment in countries in Africa, the Caribbean and South America as well."@en1
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