ESHA Governing Board Brussels, 14.12.2007 14.00 – 18.00 Participants: Adrian Abbott Bernhard Pelikan Christine Lins Fiacc O’Brolchain Gema San Bruno Hubert Zimmer Janusz Steller Jean-Pierre Corbet Marko Gospodjinacki Nino Frosio Petras Punys Sara Gollessi Sreten Skuletic Vincent Denis Wendy Lakin
BHA ESHA ESHA IHPA ESHA Renewables for Development Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery HEA-Europe SSHA APER LHA APER University of Montenegro MHyLab ESHA
Bernhard Pelikan, President of ESHA and Christine Lins, Secretary General opened the meeting by welcoming participants. The following points of the agenda were discussed: 1- Overview of ongoing activities
a) Renewables Framework Directive Christine Lins, updated the status of the legislative process as far as the RES Directive is concerned. The draft Directive will be finished by 23 of January 2008, in theory. Chrisitne Lins explained the main important points of this Directive, which will establish an overall objective of 20% by 2020 and it will focus in the production of energy for consumption from RES. She also mentioned the introduction of a flexible element in order to reach the national targets and explained the current discussion on the trading mechanisms based on guarantee of origins. Mrs Lins announced that there will be an Interservice Consultation of the Directive on the 10th January as well as a stakeholder consultation seminar at the beginning of January ESHA – European Small Hydropower Association Renewable Energy House, Rue d’Arlon 63-65, B - 1040 Bruxelles, Belgium Tel: +32.2.546.19.45 Fax: +32.2.546.19.47, e-mail: info@esha.be, I: www.esha.be
2008. She also mentioned the event of the EU Sustainable Energy week (from 28 January until 1 February in Brussels) and the participation of ESHA in the context of a policy round table organised by EREC. b) WFD – Strategy Coordination Group update Gema San Bruno, ESHA project manager introduced the latest news on WFD. The Strategy Coordination Group met in Brussels on the 7th November 2007 and ESHA attended this meeting. Among the papers and points presented during the meeting, the paper on exemptions was discussed. Gema explained that this paper is of special importance for ESHA since includes the provisions allowing exemptions from the environmental requirements settle in the WFD. The discussion of this paper was of vital importance since it was agreed to be presented for approval to the Water Directors meeting in Portugal on the 20th November 2007. Only part A of the paper on exemptions was agreed for approval of the Water Directors while part B was only presented for discussion. As result, there will be a workshop in April 2008 in Copenhagen where some open points from part B will be discussed. In particular, this workshop will focus on case studies and national approaches on the issue of disproportionate cost and the results of this workshop will be further discussed by the Water Directors during their meeting in Slovenia in June 2008. The issue on disproportionate costs covers the cost of implementing measures to achieve the environmental objectives settle in the WFD. Since this item is still open for discussion, a meeting of the drafting group on exemptions will take place on the 29 February in Brussels and the EC is asking the contribution of ESHA on examples, case studies or specific approaches to the question of disproporcionality. It was agreed that the GB members will send relevant information on this respect by 10 January. Some members from Italy and UK have some documentation already to send and it was suggested to contact GPAE for France. Gema circulated a paper summarizing not only the updates but also the drafting paper on exemptions and the current status of the process. She advised the GB to read carefully the paper for a better understanding of the whole issue.
c) Legislation on eels Gema began the discussion by announcing that on 18 September 2007 the EU passed legislation for the protection of the European Eel which has some negative impacts on SHP. Indeed, the legislation states that SHP plants should be temporarily switched off in order to reduce eel mortality. Gema had made a summary of the legislation which was included in the board documentation together with the actual legislation. However, Gema said she had found an exemption in the legislation relating to river basins within a Member State that cannot be identified as constituting the European eel’s natural habitat and which would exempt the Member State from preparing an Eel Management Plan and which SHP should try to take advantage of. Christine suggested that each Governing Board member check within their own country whether the eel problem would become greater or had a low risk, and that this subject be kept in check.
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d) Projects Gema San Bruno and Christine Lins reported the latest news on ongoing projects and reiterated that this was the main resource for the ESHA office. Gema mentioned that she had talked to the EACI and that they would fully support ESHA. A new call in January should bring more projects on SHP than before and the funding could be up to 75% instead of the usual 50%. i) SHERPA The Final Interim Report and Financial Interim Report for the first 13 months of the project were sent to the EACI at the end of November 2007. Gema announced that the project website had also been updated so that the members would find all the information there. Gema mentioned that she had talked to the EACI and that they would fully support ESHA. A new call in January should bring more projects on SHP than before and the funding could be up to 75% instead of the usual 50%. A SHERPA workshop was also held during the ENERGAIA conference in Montpellier in early December 2007 along with a session on SHP and sustainability. ii) RESTMAC (RES Technology Marketing Campaign) An update of the Renewables Roadmap will be published after the Directive is issued early next year. ESHA will focus on sustainability guidelines for hydropower from the IHA. Bernhard Pelikan, ESHA President added that he was working on compatibility with the IHA criteria in order to adapt them to SHP and would hopefully be finished early next year. iii) SHAPES The SHAPES contract finally started on 1st December 2007 and the kick-off meeting took place at the Renewable Energy House in Brussels from 13-14 December 2007. The project will mainly concentrate on research and development for SHP, is composed of 10 partners with ESHA as coordinator and will last for 24 months. A general presentation of the project will be soon available at the ESHA website. e) Collaboration with industry – HEA-Europe Christine explained that negotiations between HEA and ESHA have resulted in a final agreement which mainly, but not only, focuses on SHP. Christine than gave a quick summary since the idea was first put forward in 2006. Basically, ESHA will act as door-opener for large hydro only in providing contacts in the EU institutions for the large hydro sector, while at the same time not committing that the output will be positive. This area was believed by some members to be a little vague, so Jean-Pierre Corbet suggested ESHA redraft the agreement before sending it to Mr. Schiffer of HEA with a short note explaining the modification. Bernhard Pelikan closed the subject by stating his confidence in the success of the venture. f) China Workshop Christine explained that ESHA was still waiting for information regarding the China Workshop which should take place in Spring 2008, sometime around the 28th March. An
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outline of the workshop followed by a study tour should be available during the course of January 2008. g) Participation in events Gema gave a brief overview on the Eurostat conference that she attended in Luxembourg on 6th -7th December, as well as on one-on-one discussions she had with several Eurostat officers including the Head for RES Stats and the Head of Water Stats. One main outcome was their agreement to collaborate with ESHA. However, Gema also explained to the Board that Eurostat regarded water abstraction as the amount of water used to produce electricity whether the water is lost in the process or not and that as a result they wanted to know what amount of water was used in order to produce a certain amount of electricity. The members agreed that this was a difficult question to answer and that further discussions with Eurostat would be needed to clear the issue up. In addition, a whole system of water accounts is been settle at Eurostat with no particular results. Therefore, the officer in charge of water accounts showed great interest in including information on SHP and she is open for suggestions on the data they should collect. This news was very well welcome by the GB members and Mr Pelikan suggested arranging a meeting to discuss the different issues with the officer for water accounts in January next year. In addition, Gema has brought from the statistical office several publications covering energy and RES data like Panorama of Energy and Energy yearly statistics available for consultation of ESHA members. Gema has prepared a mission report available on demand as well as the conference programme, list of participants and presentations. h) New project ideas (SHP on the crossroads between energy & environment) Gema explained that a new call for IEE will be launched on 31st January 2008 and it would be nice to hear some new ideas from the members, ideally with some continuation of SHERPA project which includes collaboration with the national associations. Gema reminded the Board to send their ideas early on to avoid rushing. The Board circulated several ideas before it was decided to set up a brainstorming meeting during February 2008. She also explained that a meeting with the AECI will take place in January to hear from the Agency the type of proposal that would fit for SHP and will come back to the members with the outcome.
2- Update on Hidroenergia 2008, Bled, Slovenia Marko Gospodjinacki from the SSHA informed the Board on the latest news as Hidroenergia organization is concerned. The call for papers has been extended until 15 of January. The registration is electronically possible and the rooms have been booked at the venue hotel under “hidroenergia� code. In addition, he pointed out that all info and updates are accessible at the SSHA website.
3- Approval of ESHA budget 2008 The ESHA budget was approved by the Board.
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4- Miscellaneous The next Governing Board will take place sometime during the month of April, most probably in conjunction with the SHERPA Policy Forum, in Milan, Italy. The date and venue will be confirmed to the Board in mid-January 2008.
ESHA Secretariat 17th October 2007 Brussels- Belgium
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