Romania will receive more than €480 million ($514.4 million) of EU money for solar projects at mining waste sites.
The latest round of Modernisation Fund awards included backing for eight mining-related solar sites in the country.
The town of Rovinari, which hosts a 1,320 MW coal-fired power plant that is being upgraded with a further 500 MW of generation capacity, will receive a total of almost €285 million for four photovoltaic sites on mining waste piles and an ash and slag deposit.
Similar solar sites will be funded at Pinoasa, Bohorelu-Jilt, Isalnita, and Turceni, in a round of awards announced by the European Commission this week.
The aim
The Modernisation Fund aims to help coal-dependent EU member states Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia with the energy transition.
The pot is funded by revenue from the sale of carbon emission permits under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Some 2% of revenue generated by permits sold in those member states backs the Modernisation Fund in most cases, although Croatia, Czechia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia hand over more of the receipts.
Romania also secured €10.5 million of the total €2.4 billion disbursed in the latest funding round for smart grid upgrades to the transmission system for a nuclear plant and renewables sites in Dobrogea.
Czechia was awarded €150 million for clean energy projects with a generation capacity of more than 1 MW, €100 million for communally-owned PV projects, and €50 million for solar for small municipalities, with the three prizes to be distributed under the country's RES+ incentives program.
Lithuania secured €2.5 million for green hydrogen production capacity plus €10 million for clean power for energy intensive industries covered by the EU ETS and €15 million for electric vehicle purchase incentives.
Hungary's share
Among the other awards, Hungary was allocated €51.4 million for energy storage facilities to back its grid, Croatia landed €40 million for its renewables generation incentives scheme, and Poland was awarded €11.1 million for clean power for its energy-intensive industries.
Each eligible member state is given access to a different proportion of the Modernisation Fund cash, ranging from 43.4% for coal-heavy Poland to 1.4% for Latvia.
Member states have until August 16 to submit non-priority projects for the next funding round, and until September 13 for priority awards.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.