Euractiv
Summary
The director of CINEA, a recently established EU agency managing €55 billion in EU funding for clean energy and transport, has told EURACTIV about the challenge of ending fossil fuel projects entirely, saying coal and natural gas assets “are not simply going to go away” and need to be managed during the transition.
Officially established on 12 February, the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment executive agency (CINEA) has one, seemingly straightforward, mission – supporting the green transition.
With its €55-billion portfolio of EU-funded programmes running until 2027, the agency has “a clear focus on climate and environment,” said its director, Dirk Beckers.
“CINEA is the European executive agency that delivers the European Green Deal,” Beckers told EURACTIV in a written interview.
Among other energy-related programmes, the agency manages €9.5 billion in research and innovation funding until 2027 in areas such as bioenergy, solar, wind, geothermal, heating and cooling, tidal, wave, and hydropower, he said.
All of these are geared towards the EU’s decarbonisation goals, with the aim of reaching climate neutrality by 2050.
Fossil fuel projects are not totally over yet for CINEA. The agency currently has four ongoing projects dealing with “flexible power plants” which are related to fossil fuels, he said.
The main objective of these projects is to “transform coal-fired power plants into biomass-fired combined heat and power plants to help to decarbonise the energy market” and increase their flexibility, he explained.
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