A first EU-funding operation in December 2012 made EUR 1.1 billion available to 20 renewable energy projects. This leveraged over EUR 1.9 billion from the private sector.

Emphasises that appropriate market arrangements must facilitate the progressive integration of RES into the energy system and the European internal energy market in all the Member States without delay and that in the long term different types of RES, in accordance with their intrinsic characteristics and capabilities, must take on stabilising functions and tasks within the system that have previously been performed by conventional energy sources; stresses that promising examples of such markets exist in the EU; calls, in that connection, for greater account to be taken, in planning and implementation, of the positive and negative and direct and indirect side effects of RES, i ...[+++]n particular with regard to existing infrastructure, such as transmission and distribution systems and the environment, biodiversity and nature conservation; calls on the Commission and the Member States to raise public awareness of the potential effects of the various RES technologies;

Agrees with the Commission that RES, together with energy efficiency measures and flexible and smart infrastructure, are the ‘no regrets’ options identified by the Commission and that RES in the future will account for a growing share of energy provision in Europe, for electricity supply, for heating (which makes up nearly half of the total energy demand in the EU) and cooling and for the transport sector, and that they will reduce Europe’s dependence on conventional energy; adds that targets and milestones should be set for the period to 2050 in order to ensure that RES have a credible future in the EU; recalls that all scenarios presented by the Commission in its Energy Roadmap 2050 assume a share of at least 30 % RES in the EU’s energy ...[+++] mix in 2030; suggests, therefore, that the EU should endeavour to achieve an even higher share, and calls on the Commission to propose a mandatory EU-wide RES target for 2030, taking into account the mutually interacting effects with other potential climate and energy policy targets, in particular with a GHG emission reduction target, as well its impact on the competitiveness of EU industries, including the RES industrial sectors;

Notes that, in order to guarantee supply security, the development of RES with variable feed-in will necessitate a flexible balancing of fluctuations and a flexible back-up through an integrated and interconnected European electricity grid that allows cross-border trading, demand response systems, energy storage and flexible power plants; calls on the Commission to assess whether there is a capacity issue in the EU and to determine the amount of firm capacity that can be provided by variable RES in an integrated EU power system, as well as its potential impact on generation adequacy; agrees with Commission’s analysis that the developme ...[+++]nt of reserve capacity mechanisms entails substantial costs and may distort price signals; notes that there is an increasing need for a stable policy framework to provide economic guarantees concerning the availability of these reserves as well as for system and balancing services; rejects the concept of competition for subsidies between energy sources and calls for an energy market design tailored to the Union’s long-term energy and climate policy objectives, which makes it possible to integrate RES technologies into the internal energy market, but acknowledges that state aid has historically been necessary in the development of all energy sources;

National and EU policies for renewable raw materials have potential effects on industrial users.

Given the considerable efforts necessary to combat climate change and to adapt to its inevitable effects, it is appropriate that at least 50 % of the proceeds from the auctioning of allowances should be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to adapt to the impacts of climate change, to fund research and development for reducing emissions and adaptation, to develop renewable energies to meet the Union’s commitment to using 20 % renewable energies by 2020, to meet the commitment of the Commun ...[+++]ity to increase energy efficiency by 20 % by 2020, to provide for the environmentally safe capture and geological storage of greenhouse gases, to contribute to the Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund and to the Adaptation Fund as made operational by the Poznan Conference on Climate Change (COP 14 and COP/MOP 4), to provide for measures to avoid deforestation and facilitate adaptation in developing countries, and to address social aspects such as possible increases in electricity prices in lower and middle income households.