Can the EU's wind power package really help its under-pressure industry?
European Commission due to present package that will focus on permitting, auctions, skills, access to finance and stable supply chains
The European Commission tomorrow (Tuesday) is expected to present a new package to help the continent’s loss-making wind industry, as Ursula von der Leyen announced during her State of the Union speech in September.
But will the package really go beyond previous plans announced with fanfare by the EU and help the embattled industry, or will it just recycle already existing measures under a fancy new name?
“It will complement the existing framework under the revised Renewable Energy Directive to fast-track permitting even more and it will improve the auction systems across all EU Member States,” a Commission spokesman said.
“It will be part of our work to deliver the European Green Deal, which includes supporting industry with the green transition.”
The spokesman declined to say, however, whether the package will include guidelines for auctions that include pre-qualification and non-price criteria in a way that they could help European manufacturers shield themselves from cheap Chinese competitors – a measure increasingly being demanded by the sector.
Manufacturers are concerned they could be pushed out of their home market by Chinese (or other overseas) rivals just like solar panel makers before them a decade ago, and point to Chinese OEMs being helped by cheap state financing and often obscure state subsidies, as well as possible dumping prices.
“There’s a whole difference between European companies trying to compete in the Chinese market fairly without unfair public subsidies and Chinese companies competing in the European market with unfairly subsidised financial terms, and prices that may well be unfairly subsidised as well,” he said.
The auctioning design should favour the “best projects” instead of just the cheapest, a WindEurope official said. Pre-qualification criteria should make sure that critical data are stored on servers in Europe and not elsewhere, was another demand.
Current EU state aid regulation already allows for non-price criteria to weigh up to 30% in a tender, and some countries such as the Netherlands are already applying that rule.
To help European manufacturers, the EU could sharpen that rule and make it binding for all tenders.
Support for manufacturers?
It is unclear which measures in financing the European Commission plans.
The draft document said the EU would closely monitor "possible unfair trade practices which benefit foreign wind manufacturers" including subsidies for products sold into the European market, the agency said.
"If justified, the Commission will activate its trade defence instruments," the draft is quoted as saying. The EU last month had already launched an investigation into cheap Chinese electric vehicle imports.
The EU or its member states could also grant cheap financing themselves for wind manufacturers in Europe.
In principle, that should already be possible after the EU earlier this year created its new ‘temporary crisis and transition framework’ which greatly expands the scope for EU member states to grant state aid.
“The manufacturers know that there will be a large wind power market in Germany in the future, both onshore and offshore,” Habeck said at the opening of the Husum Wind exposition and conference in northern Germany.
“The orders aren't really arriving yet, but I would still like the manufacturers of wind turbines to maintain capacity now and, if necessary, expand it.”
WindEurope also pointed to the fact that companies currently don’t have enough capital to invest in the supply chain. But it is unclear whether or how the EU as part of its wind power package would come up with further measures to shore up financing for manufacturers and their suppliers.