ESHA Governing Board & General Assembly Granada, 15.10.2007 14.00 – 18.00 Participants: Bernhard Pelikan Christer Söderberg Christine Lins David Williams Gema San Bruno Hugues Albanel Jacques Fonkenell Jean-Pierre Corbet Manuel de Delás Marko Gospodjinacki Sara Gollessi Sreten Skuletic Vincent Denis
ESHA SERO ESHA BHA (for a part) ESHA GPAE HEA-Europe HEA-Europe APPA SSHA APER University of Montenegro MHyLab
Bernhard Pelikan, President of ESHA and Christine Lins, Secretary General opened the meeting by welcoming participants and introducing the new ESHA Project Manager Gema San Bruno. The Agenda was discussed as well as the purpose of the meeting. The meeting combined the Governing Board issues together with the General Assembly approval of accounts for 2006. The meeting was held in Granada, Spain, during the conference Hydro 2007. The following points of the agenda were discussed: 1- Overview of ongoing activities Christine Lins introduced the latest developments in ESHA activities, which included: a) Water Framework Directive. ESHA has drafted two papers on the latest developments of the Strategy Coordination Group activities. The first paper distributed to the Members explains the involvement of ESHA in each working group and the latest documentation as a result of the meetings. The second paper summarises the conclusions of the CIS workshop on WFD and Hydropower, which was held in Berlin on the 4-5 June 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
2007. Christine Lins informed all members that all documents regarding the WFD are available on the ESHA website under the “members only” section which has been reactivated and redesigned in order to offer ESHA members a bulk of important information that comes to ESHA and is often lost concerning targeted projects across the world, consultations to ESHA experts, energy events and other targeted information. The username and password to access this information are “eshamember” and “esha05” respectively.
Christer Söderberg (SERO) informed the participants that EREF plans to organise a meeting on the WFD in Brussels on 13th November and suggested that ESHA gets in touch with them in order to coordinate actions on this matter. b) RE Framework Directive Christine Lins gave an update on the developments in the legislative process of drafting the new Directive on renewable energies (RE) which will have a binding target of 20% of energy production from RE by 2020. In this respect, she introduced a position paper drafted by EREC in which many aspects as regard definitions, distribution of targets, support mechanisms, fair conditions etc., are considered in order to lobby the legislators in the drafting process of the Directive. The draft Directive is expected to be released by the Commission on 5th of December 2007. Christine Lins communicated that on the 29th of January 2008 there will an EREC Policy workshop in Brussels in the context of the European Sustainable Energy Week, and she expressed it as a good opportunity to put the hydro approach forward in the context of the new Directive. Some participants suggested organising a parallel small hydropower workshop, however SHP interests will for sure be taken up at the EREC workshop (an ESHA representative will be invited as a panellist for the event). ESHA partners discussed the possibility, foreseen in the new Directive, of developing a trading system of certificates of origin. The conclusion was that small units should be protected and that long-term support systems would be needed. c) Sustainable Hydropower & IHA sustainability guidelines ESHA is planning to adapt the guidelines for small hydropower schemes and Bernhard Pelikan has taken the lead in this action. He reported to the Governing Board the recent developments as regards this exercise which is still ongoing since the criteria that are applicable only for small hydropower must be identified. d) Projects Gema San Bruno and Christine Lins reported the latest news on ongoing projects. SHERPA: ESHA is preparing the Interim Report and the Interim Financial Statements that must be ready by November 2007. Both reports cover the first 12 months of the project. A project meeting is 2
taking place during in Hydro 2007 on the 17th October, and a session of the Conference has been assigned to the project themes. Looking into future activities, Christer Söderberg pointed out the difficulty of finding the right experts and figures to complete a questionnaire that has been designed in order to describe the SHP situation in EU-27. In order to ease the work, it was proposed to deliver a shorter questionnaire in the future and to further search out the appropriated experts. RESTMAC: Christine Lins announced that from 6-8 December 2007 there will be a conference in Montpellier, France called “Energaia” in which ESHA is involved with two small hydropower actions: ESHA will facilitate a workshop on public image (SHERPA) as well as give a presentation on SHP & sustainability (RESTMAC). SHAPES: Christine Lins announced that ESHA has finally received the contract for this project and that the activities will start in December. The project runs for two years and the project partners receive financing of around 80% from FP6. The aim of the project is to create a network of research bodies across Europe, which in turn will create a network of excellence. In addition, it is foreseen to develop a Masters in SHP, an activity in cooperation with EUREC Agency in the framework of the RE Master. It was agreed that the Kick-off meeting of SHAPES will take place together with the next Governing Board meeting in 14 December 2007 in the REH in Brussels. Trade Mission to Pakistan. ESHA informed its members that a trade mission delegation visit is foreseen to happen on 10-14 December 2007 and ESHA members are invited to participate since their costs will be covered. e) Call for proposals for FP-7 The first results on the proposals ESHA presented or collaborated for the FP-7 call are not very positive despite the fact that ESHA’s lobbying activities were very successful in getting the hydro priorities in the call. Nevertheless, it was agreed that ESHA would check the reasons why these projects were not accepted in order to be able to improve them for resubmission at the next call. Vincent Dennis and Jacques Fonkenell were asked to send a summary of their proposals to ESHA. f) Collaboration HEA-Europe Industry: Jean-Pierre Corbet informed the Governing Board about the meeting that will take place on the 16 October in Hydro 2007 and which will include new people from new companies. IEA-Annex II Small Hydro: Christine Lins informed the Board about a dinner meeting on the 16 October to revise the actions in collaboration with the IEA. In addition, it was also communicated that a workshop in China in March 2008 is foreseen under the T@W 3
project. There is possibility and the budget to organise a study tour. Until the next Governing Board meeting, ESHA will draft the programme and the budget for the study tour which will be distributed among members to finalise their participation. g) ESHA participation in events Bernhard Pelikan mentioned his participation in the OTTI Seminar in Salzburg as well as in Hydro Sri Lanka in November, funded by his university. h) New Members Christer Söderberg communicated that there was a possibility that Norway would join ESHA in 2008 and Marko Gospodjinacki offered to make contact with Balkan Countries.
2- Update on Hidroenergia 2008 Marko Gospodjinacki explained to the Board the recent developments on the organisation of Hidroenergia 2008, which includes the Second Announcement and Call for Papers as well as the exhibitors and sponsors guide being ready for distribution. Copies were available at Hydro 2007 for dissemination. The Call for Papers is open until 15th December and the online registration is ready. A new email address for the Conference has been created: hidroenergia@esha.be. A Scientific Committee for evaluating the papers will be appointed shortly. Electronic as well as Paper copies of the Second Announcement are available from ESHA. Also discussed was the “tentative” venue for Hydro 2010 in order to avoid conflicts with other conferences. It seems that Switzerland could host the next Hidroenergia.
3- Miscellaneous The next Governing Board will take place on 14 December 2007 in Brussels in the afternoon, while the kick-off meeting of the SHAPES project will be held on the same day during the morning. ESHA will be recruiting a Deputy Secretary General to begin working from January 2008. As a consequence of several discussions after the Governing Board meeting, it was decided to rephrase the job title of the new person and to look for a Policy Officer. A job description will be posted on the ESHA website and sent to the ESHA Governing Board. Christer Söderberg informed the Board about a court case on reserved flow in Sweden. This case will be explained in detail in the next ESHA newsletter due out in November 2007. Jacques Fonkenell mentioned the problem of eel protection by EU law and has asked ESHA to find out the latest developments in this respect.
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The General Assembly took place during the second part of the meeting and concentrated on the approval of the 2006 accounts. Christine Lins explained the ESHA operating statement and balance sheet of 2006 as well as the budget update for 2007. The General Assembly approved the accounts for 2006.
ESHA Secretariat 30th October 2007 Brussels- Belgium
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