ESHA Governing Board & General Assembly Lausanne, 29.6.05 Minutes Governing Board 14.00 – 18.00 Participants: Hugues Albanel Philippe Beutin Jean-Pierre Corbet Steve Cryer Vincent Denis Jacques Fonkenell Nino Frosio Maria Laguna Christine Lins Wendy Lakin David Miller Maurice Morello Bernhard Pelikan Celse Penche Petras Punys Christer Söderberg Ghislain Weisrock Hanspeter Leutwiler Richard Taylor
GPAE ADEME SCPTH BHA MHylab VA TECH APER ESHA ESHA ESHA Irish Hydropower Association Syndicat Ecowatt Kleinwasserkraft Österreich Lithuanian Hydropower Association SERO GPAE ISKB IHA
The ESHA Governing Board met in Lausanne on the 29 th July 2005 one day before the Thematic Network Workshop, Bernhard Pelikan opened the meeting and welcomed everybody to Lausanne He especially welcomed Hanspeter Leutwiler from the ISKB in Switzerland- and Richard Taylor from the IHA- guests in this Governing Board Session. Hanspeter Leutwiler gave an overview of the Swiss small hydropower association ISKB and the SHP sector in Switzerland. He informed that ISKB was created 23 years ago and represented some 250 SHP plants.
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Richard Taylor gave an overview on the International Hydropower Association and its ongoing activities. The Association has about 1000 individual and 80 corporate members. The IHA was founded in 1995, under the auspices of UNESCO's International Hydrological Programme, to advance knowledge on all aspects of hydropower and to promote good practice, especially, on the sustainability guidelines and compliance Protocol, that will allow the ensuring sustainability of hydropower plants and that can be used for benchmarking of projects or as a screening tool for financial institutions. This compliance Protocol is currently in a testing phase and the IHA welcomes small hydro operators to use it and give feedback on it. And, on the Blue planet prize: the prize recognises good practice in the development and operation of a hydropower scheme. 1. Welcome and outline of programme for Lausanne Christine reviewed the programme of the workshop, underlining the different sessions and the various topics. About 100 participants from 16 different countries are registered for the workshop. 2.
Overview of ongoing activities a) SHP input into FP7 Christine Lins explained that Prof. Didier Mayer, President of EUREC Agency has presented the RES priorities for FP7 (including SHP input developed by the TNSHP) at a meeting on research infrastructures organised by DG Research. Christine explained that a new separate budget line would be available for Research Infrastructures as centres of excellence for research issues, open also for renewables. DG Research is leading the process of defining research infrastructures to be put in place within FP7. b) WFD update of progress A letter for lobbying for the creation of a working group on hydropower has been sent to all the national associations to be translated and sent to the Water Director in their respective countries. So far ESHA has got in copy the letter from Italy, Portugal, Greece, Austria and France. Christine asked the other associations to send a copy of their letters to ESHA when they send them to the Water Director. Petras Punys explained that the letter for the LHA has been sent and that he will send a copy to ESHA, Steve Cryer explained that the BHA had a meeting with its Water Director and he was very supportive. ESHA participated in the Strategy coordination group meeting on the WFD that took place in Brussels in 19-20 May. Various countries were very supportive about the issue to create a working group on hydromorphological aspects (hydropower and navigation), concretely Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, and France. The Water Directors decided in their last meeting 20-21 July to start such a new working group on hydromorphological issues (hydropower and navigation). This activity will be led by the DG Environment, who will ensure DG TREN involvement in this working group. A HMWB workshop in Prague is scheduled for the 17 th-18th October. ESHA will check the foreseen programme and will try to be represented there. 2
Ghislain Weisrock is going to Finland for the workshop organised by Eurelectric (4-5 July) on the WFD and will check on the position of Eurelectric on this issue. Bernard Pelikan, asked the members of ESHA - WFD working group to comment on the last paper of the group in order to prepare the next working group meeting. A copy of the paper is attached to the minutes. c)
Hydro 2005 - One main session on SHP Christine Lins explained that there is an agreement between ESHA and Alison Bartle to have a session of SHP the year not having the Hidroenergia conference. Therefore, there will be a SHP session in Villach, Austria on Wednesday 19th October in the morning, followed by the next Governing Board which will take place after the conference session in the afternoon of 19 th October 2005. - One parallel session on SHP in Developing countries There will be also a parallel session on Tuesday 18 October evening: a 2 hour workshop entitled "Small Hydropower a solution for Sustainable Development": experiences in Europe and markets in Developing Countries, chaired by Christine Lins, under the framework of the TNSHP. d) Hidroenergia 2006 The next Hidroenergia will be held in Crieff, Scotland from 7-9 June 2006. Steve Cryer confirmed that the venue had been booked and handed out some brochures of the venue to all Governing Board Members. Apart from accommodation, study tours will be arranged as well as various competitions and a gala dinner. Steve promised to produce the first announcement soon (by 15th July). e) TNSHP Maria explained the ongoing activities of the TNSHP. She asked the members of the Governing Board to give feedback on the publication on State of the Art of SHP in EU –25. This publication needs to be ready for Villach. Deadline for comments 1st August. Once getting the comments of the publication, the questionnaire on installed capacities and electricity generation will be sent to the members of the Board for getting figures from 20012004. f) SYNERGY In April, a training of key-actors took place in Hangzhou, China. IN-SHP is in close collaboration with EREC, ESHA and CREIA, and Bernhard & Christine did a presentation there. Another workshop was organised under this project in Brussels 19-20 May with a focus of informing the European audience on the new Chinese RES law which will enter into force in January 2006. This project will also allow EREC/ESHA to finance costs related to the participation in the follow-up conference of the Bonn conference, which is foreseen to take place in Beijing on 7-8 November 2005. EREC is involved in the preparations of the Bonn follow-up conference through Arthouros Zervos who is one of the five Vice-Chairs of the Steering Committee of 3
REN 21, the Global Policy Network created after the Bonn conference. Richard Taylor informed the Board about the concerns of IHA concerning this committee as they seem to have a rather negative opinion on large hydro. g) SHYCA Maria explained that a kick-off meeting of this project and a Workshop took place in Tbilisi Georgia in May 2005. The workshop proceedings are included in the material of the Governing Board meeting. The objective of the project is to analyse the potential of SHP development in Caucasus and promote cooperation with the European Union. The project started 1st March 2005 and lasts until 31st August 2006. ESHA budget is 15900 - 100% financed. ESHA will present the project during Hidroenergia 2006. h) ESHA Participation in events 4th April: Inspection visit for Hidroenergia in Crieff, Scotland (Christine) 19-23 April: Synergy Workshop at IN-SHP in Hangzhou, China (Christine & Bernhard) 4-5 May: SHYCA workshop Tblisi, Georgia (Maria) 6th May: Lecture on SHP at Trinity College, Dublin (Bernhard) 19-20 May: WFD strategy coordination group, Brussels (Christine & Maria) 19-20 May: Synergy conference Brussels (Christine & Maria) 23-25 May: International Center for Hydropower, Starvanger, Norway (Bernhard) 27-29 May: SHP project inspection visit, North Ossetia (Bernhard & Christine) 30th May: SHP roundtable Moscow (Bernhard & Christine) 8th June: Workshop on SHP in the Czech Republic, St. PĂślten, Austria (Bernhard) 27th June: UNEP and EBRD meeting, Brussels (Christine & Maria) 29th June: TNSHP meeting Lausanne (Bernhard, Christine & Maria) i) Communication activities (website, newsletter) Christine explained that there is an agreement with Jackie Jones for the Renewable Energy World to provide an article on SHP for each issue upcoming issue: on SHP in Europe for August issue, on the New members States for October, and on environmental Integration for December issue. Furthermore, a series of articles on SHP were published in various magazines such as Aquapress, Hyropower & Dams and a special newsletter of VA Tech (handed out to the GB participants featuring an interview with Bernhard Pelikan).
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Membership fees The Executive committee has developed a proposal for reforming the ESHA membership fee structure. This seems crucial in order to put ESHA on a more stable and predictable economic basis. After the change of statutes the national member associations were encouraged to pay membership fee according to the number of their national members. Some associations have applied this principle in a very accurate way, like GPAE for example, but many of the national associations have just been sticking to the minimum fee of 1.000 â‚Ź which resulted in the fact 4
that the membership fees dropped considerably in the past, not representing enough income for a continued operation of the ESHA Secretariat. Furthermore, an increase in membership fees is needed in order to secure the needed co-financing for ESHA’s participation in EU projects. The new proposed membership fee structure is a follows: a model has been developed with which a degressive fee can be calculated according to the installed capacity represented by the different associations. The model was presented at the Governing Board and in the discussion thereafter, it was agreed that all capacity represented by the association (with no capacity limit) should be considered for calculation of the fee. The new fee calculation method was accepted, it was decided unanimously to present the fee model to the General Assembly to formally adopt it. The new system should be in place as of beginning of 2005. Both model and table indicating the respective fees for each national association are attached to the minutes. The calculation of the membership fees was based on the installed capacities reported by the different national associations. 4.
Outlook on future projects/proposals
FP6 – RESTMAC The RESTMAC proposal (co-ordinated by EREC) has been selected for FP6 funding. ESHA’s budget is of about 90.000 € for 3 years, 80 % financed by FP6. The project objective is to develop a technology marketing campaign, ESHA being responsible for the SHP related activities within the campaign. FP6-T@W This project has been selected under FP6 as well, ESHA is involved in a trading mission with India and China, and cooperation with identified potential CDM projects, and information dissemination. Budget for ESHA is 32.000 €, 80% financed, for a duration of 2 years. IEE There will be an upcoming call under IEE which will be launched in September with a deadline at the beginning of 2006, where ESHA intends to submit a proposal together with some of its national associations. The members of the Board are invited to communicate their interest in participating in such a proposal to ESHA. The proposal should be centred around the challenges for SHP (conflict RES-E Directive and WFD, refurbishment of SHP, new construction, environmental integration, capacity building for SHP in New Member States, dissemination activities on SHP, Hidroenergia 2008). IEE grants are made available only to soft type of activities such as capacity building, networking, promotion training and studies. Ghislain Weisrock proposed to do a proposal on RES-E directive governance, following up of the RES-E directive implementation and installation of a Governance system similar to WFD. Christine proposed to have a draft proposal to be discussed in Villach.
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Update on Renewable Energy House – sponsoring concept
Christine informed the Board on the recent developments concerning the Renewable Energy House for which the contract is now finally signed and to which the associations will move in January 2006. The Board received a first information leaflet on the REH, which will contain a series of RES technology installations (pellets heating system, solar thermal heating & cooling installation with geothermal support, PV). For the technologies, which cannot be used in the building (wind and SHP), there will be the possibility of displays in the courtyard. Industry companies are invited to provide equipment and sponsor such kinds of display. For SHP, the display of a Pelton and a Kaplan turbine is proposed. Interested suppliers are invited to contact Christine. 6. Miscellaneous – upcoming events October 2005: EAF Conference to be held in Aix-en-Provence – date to be confirmed. 10 November 2005: Workshop on SHP to be held in Italy. ESHA’s participation would be appreciated. 17-20 October Hydro 2005 Villach (next Governing Board Meeting at the occasion of Hydro 2005) 7-9 December 2005: Hydro-Forum Conference in Poland: It was discussed to hold the preChristmas Governing Board Meeting in Poland also and on those dates under the condition that the Polish association decided to become members of ESHA. If not, other possibilities proposed were Paris or Slovenia.
Agenda General Assembly 18.00 – 19.00 1. Activity report 2004/2005 A report was given on activities carried out by ESHA during 2004/2005 (see details minutes of Governing Board Meeting). 2. Approval of accounts 2004 The General Assembly approved the ESHA accounts for 2004. 3. Membership fees The new membership fee model as discussed during the Governing Board was approved unanimously. Bernhard Pelikan closed the meeting at 19.00, the next ESHA Governing Board Meeting will take place on 19th October from 14.00 – 18.00 at Hydro 2005 in Villach/Austria.
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