Aurélie Beauvais, Policy Director of SolarPower Europe said:
“Small-scale renewables make the energy transition a reality at the local level. The diverse groups of stakeholders supporting the Small is Beautiful campaign shows that the benefits of small renewable installations are spread across all layers of society. We are calling for a step-wise market integration of small scale renewables, that acknowledges the specificity of such installations, while adopting an approach that will foster innovation through a dedicated framework for demonstration projects”.
The future of small-scale renewable installations in Europe is currently under threat, after the Council of the European Union introduced balancing responsibility obligations, supported the phase out of priority dispatch and introduced a bidding obligation on small-scale renewable and high efficiency cogeneration installations, demonstration projects, and energy communities. This would force consumers, homeowners and small businesses to compete on the same market and with the same requirements as major utility-scale energy producers. Ultimately, such small actors would not be able to compete with the incumbent energy producers, forcing most to leave the power sector, which would kill off Europe's blossoming small scale energy production market.
Since its launch in November 2017, the Small is Beautiful campaign has gained increasing support. In the past two months, Energy Cities, the International Union of Property Owners (UIPI), REScoop.EU, and the European Builders Confederation (EBC) have joined the campaign to raise awareness of the importance of small-scale renewables and demonstration projects for Europe's industrial leadership in clean energy technologies, and to preserve local, sustainable and skilled jobs.
