An in-depth
investigation was launched by the European Commission in order to assess
whether Spain’s environmental incentive for coal power plants is in line with
the European Union’s State aid rules.
“If you pollute, you pay – this is a
long-standing principle in EU environmental law,” said Commissioner Margrethe
Vestager, in charge of competition policy. “EU State aid rules do not allow
Member States to relieve companies of this responsibility using taxpayer money.
We currently believe that this Spanish scheme did not incentivise coal power
plants to reduce harmful sulphur oxide emissions – they were already under an
obligation to do so under EU environmental law. Therefore, we are concerned
that the support gave these coal power plants an unfair competitive advantage.
We will now investigate this issue further.”
Ten years
ago, Spain introduced a scheme to support the installation of new sulphur oxide
filters in existing coal power plants. These filters were supposed to reduce
sulphur oxide emissions from those plants below certain limits. In return, the
coal power plants were entitled to receive public support linked to the size of
the plant for a period of 10 years (i.e. €8,750 per megawatt per year).
Since then,
14 coal power plants benefitted from the scheme and received in total more than
€440m in public support, and payments will continue until 2020.
But Spain
did not notify this measure to the Commission for assessment under EU State aid
rules.
Now the
European Commission has concerns that the emission limits imposed on
beneficiaries of the scheme merely implement mandatory environmental EU
standards which applied to coal power plants at the time. The relevant legal
requirements were laid down in EU legislation on the limitation of emissions of
certain pollutants into the air from large combustion plants.
If
confirmed, this means that the scheme did not actually have any environmental
incentive effect.
What is
more, the financial support may breach a long-standing principle of EU State
aid rules, namely that member states may not grant State aid to companies to
meet mandatory environmental EU standards. This would go against the “polluter
pays” principle and give the relevant coal power plants an unfair competitive
advantage towards other forms of power generation and towards coal power plants
in other EU countries subject to the same EU legislation.
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/brussels-opens-depth-investigation-spains-support-coal-power-plants/