European Union (EU) Member states have approved a proposal submitted earlier by the European Commission, which supports investments of almost €800m in key European energy infrastructure projects with major cross-border benefits. The funds will be provided by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the European support programme for trans-European infrastructure.
The projects are selected on several criteria such as the increase of competitiveness across the EU, the enhancement of the region's security of energy supply and the contribution to environmental protection and sustainable development. In total, 14 projects will receive CEF support: 7 for electricity, 2 for smart grids, 2 for CO2 cross-border transportation and 3 for gas infrastructure. The funds will be allocated as follows: €504m for the 4 electricity and smart grids proposals, €286m for the gas sector and €9.3m to support studies on the development of a CO2 transport infrastructure.
The bulk of the electricity funds (€323m) will be allocated to the Baltic electricity synchronisation project, which aims at decoupling the electricity networks of the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) from the Russian system. The three countries are still synchronously connected to the central dispatch facility of Russia and their respective governments aim at synchronising their networks with the Continental European Network (CEN). The completion of the project is not expected before 2025. In addition, the modernisation of the power interconnection between the Czech Republic and Slovakia (smart grids in the border region) will receive €91m.
Besides, most of the gas sector funds (€215m) will be dedicated to the 10 bcm/year bi-directional Baltic Pipe offshore gas interconnection project between Poland and Denmark, whose construction is now set to start in 2020 with the commissioning date set in 2022. The Baltic Pipe project would enable the flow of Norwegian natural gas to Denmark and Poland, helping the latter to reduce Russian gas imports.