Support on the use of congestion revenues for Offshore Renewable Energy Projects connected to more than one market

In November 2020, the European Commission published an EU strategy on offshore renewable energy entitled “An EU Strategy to harness the potential of offshore renewable energy for a climate neutral future COM/2020/741”. This strategy is an important element of the European Green Deal and the ambition to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.

Accompanying the strategy is a Staff Working Document SWD/2020/273 that provides guidance on electricity market arrangements. This SWD explores some of the investment challenges facing market-based investments in offshore renewable energy and focuses particularly on those projects that are connected to more than one market. In the case of these “hybrid” projects, depending on the project topology, there can be a redistribution effect of the revenues captured by the project away from generators and towards TSOs in the form of congestion income. This can be mitigated in several ways, for example, via support schemes. However, as we seek to encourage more market-based investments, the possibility to access some of the congestion income from the project could support the business case for more projects overall. The aim of this study is to investigate the options regarding congestion income and provide a recommendation to the Commission.

Maximum amount: 60.000 €

Economic operators who do not express their interest before the deadline will not be invited to submit an offer. The latter restriction will not apply to the minimum five economic operators directly invited by the Commission.

Deadline for the expression of interest is 09 April 2021 at midnight.

Please express your interest by e-mail to this address: ENER-C3-CALLS-NEWec [dot] europa [dot] eu (ENER-C3-CALLS-NEW[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).