The first call for projects associated with the EU's Just Transition public sector loan facility is expected this year after the presidency of the European Council, currently occupied by Portugal, and the European Parliament yesterday reached a provisional agreement on the program.
The fund would allocate €1.5 billion of grants from EU resources, tied to a total loan package of €10 billion, to be made available by the European Investment Bank. The money will be for public sector institutions in the regions of the bloc most likely to suffer from the move away from fossil fuel power generation.
The council, which is composed of representatives of member state governments, and the parliament will now need to ratify the deal agreed yesterday, with legislation for the public sector loan facility set to follow “in the coming weeks,” the EU announced yesterday. Provided member states have completed just transition plans approved by the European Commission, they will be eligible to apply for grant and loan funding, with the first call for projects slated for the autumn.
The parliament yesterday raised the generosity of the public sector loan facility by negotiating that the less-developed regions of the EU – previously defined as having less than 75% of the bloc's average per-capita GDP – will be able to receive 25% of their funding in the form of grants, up from the 20% previously suggested. More developed regions will be eligible for 15% grant support.
The deal agreed yesterday also extends the period during which the new funding stream will be fenced off for just transition regions, by a year, until the end of 2025. After that point, any remaining funds will be made available for bidding by EU member states without regard to their just transition eligibility.
The EU hopes the €11.5 billion package will generate €25-30 billion of investment in the energy transition.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.