The Parliament had in its first reading adopted a report drafted by Norbert Glante (PSE, Germany), in which it had tabled numerous amendments to the initial proposal, mainly focusing on a definition for electricity produced by cogeneration, a methodology for comparing cogeneration with separate (i.e. traditional) production of heat and electricity in order to determine primary energy savings, and a target which stipulates that each Member State should achieve a cogeneration electricity output of at least 18% by 2012 (see
EurActiv, 16 May 2003).The Energy Council had given political agreement to the directive in its meeting on 14 May, when it agreed on the last outstanding issues. These included the question of grid access for electricity from cogeneration units of under 1 MWe and a system of methodologies for calculating the efficiency of cogeneration, adding three alternative methods to the Commission's proposal, based on harmonised, rather than national, efficiency reference values.
On 23 July 2003, the Commission published a reviewed proposal which focused on facilitating grid access for small amounts of cogeneration electricity, transmission and distribution. On the question of assessing efficiency, the Commission introduced a methodology based on harmonised reference values instead of national ones. However, the new proposal keeps the original definition of cogeneration and the original formula for the calculation of primary energy savings.
_stack2.jpg){kind=small}
