The European Commission has provided the Member Countries a proposal to allocate funds from the 2016 CEF Synergy call budget under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) aims to accelerate investments in field of trans-European networks in transport, energy and telecommunications. Enabling and strengthening the synergies between the three CEF sectors is among its key priorities. Actions across sectors may enable costs or results to be optimized through the pooling of financial, technical or human resources, thus enhancing the effectiveness of EU funding.
CEF Synergy calls for proposal will support these synergies, in particular in areas such as smart energy grids, electric mobility, intelligent and sustainable transport systems, joint rights of way of infrastructure coupling.
INEA has launched the first call for proposal to support synergy actions combining two difficult areas: transport and energy sector, with a total budget of €40 million. Actions selected under this call will support the deployment of sustainable and efficient transport and energy infrastructure.
Only 14 applications from all over the European Union submitted their proposals in the call, of which only 9 were accepted for substantive assessment. Among the applicants, besides Poland, were countries such as Germany, Croatia, the Netherlands and Austria. Probably the novelty of the call and short time to prepare the proposals caused only few beneficiaries took the challenge and decided to apply for co-financing.
The European Commission has recommended 7 projects for a total budget of approximately EUR 22 million. One of them is the Polish Project Feasibility Study for the construction of a small scale LNG terminal in Gdańsk. The value of the project is about 7.7 million PLN, of which the CEF subsidy is about 4.6 million PLN.
The Polish project was submitted by Lotos Group together with Gaz-System. The project includes a feasibility study for the construction of a small-scale LNG terminal in Gdansk as a transshipment base for bunkering and LNG distribution.
The Commission proposal will still need to be approved by Member Countries within the CEF Co-ordination Committee, which is expected in April 2017.
Source and more information: Ministry of Development (Poland) , INEA