Working Breakfast “Hydropower Energy – Supply for a Future Europe”

On 28th November 2012, SME Europe together with Swissgrid organized a Working Breakfast on: Hydropower Energy – Supply for a Future Europe in the Salon des Membres of the European Parliament.

Paul RÜBIG MEP, EP Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and Founder SME EUROPE hosted, welcome and moderated the meeting.

In his keynote speech, Pierre-Alain GRAF, CEO Swissgrid presented Switzerland and the European electricity market, concluding Europe and Switzerland need to work together in order to ensure security of supply across Europe, to actively transform the electricity systems for integrating renewables and to successfully achieve the energy and climate targets.

Hans van STEEN, Head of Unit, Renewables and CCS policy, DG Energy, European Commission tackled the role of hydropower in the EU’s Renewable Energies Policy and he detailed the European Commission targets for hydropower energy towards 2020.

Josef RAMPL, European Association of medium-sized energy companies presented the contribution of Small Hydro-Power plants to grid stability, while Bente HAGEM, Executive Vice President of Statnett SF mentioned a key task will be to develop a common market design for the Nordic countries and Europe. Statnett is heavily involved in the key processes to ensure that developments proceed in the right direction.

Roland LANGTHALER, Head of Legislative Affairs, VERBUND, focused on the cost efficient power generation and presented Hydropower as key to serve all energy priorities.

The event ended with an interesting question and answers session and the presentation of a Small Hydropower Roadmap (SHP) providing a status report on energy, market and policy situation concerning SHP in each of the 27 EU member states by Martina STEINKUSZ, Communication Manager from the European Small Hydropower Association (ESHA). This document and a free database (HYDI) have been created in the framework of the Stream Map project, co-funded by the IEE programme of the European Commission.

Downloads
  Presentation Swissgrid
  Presentation European Commission
  Presentation Verbund
  Small Hydropower Roadmap (SHP)

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The publication of this document received financial support from the European Parliament. Sole liability rests with the author. The European Parliament is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.