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The Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC1 ("the Directive") established a European framework for the promotion of renewable energy, setting mandatory national renewable energy targets for achieving a 20% share of renewable energy in the final energy consumption. These goals are headline targets of the European 20201 strategy for growth, since they contribute to Europe's industrial innovation and technological leadership as well as reducing emissions, improving the security of our energy supply and reducing our energy import dependency. The Commission has indicated that the 2020 targets for renewable energy can be achieved through cooperation between Member States and third countries. This cooperation could lead to win-win situations, when a country with a large low-cost potential for renewable electricity could transfer part of its surplus to a country with a limited and/or expensive potential. The precondition for establishing cooperation is that the participating countries all need to have a net benefit from cooperation. The objective of this article is to identify renewable energy cooperation potential between MS and the West Balkan and to explore strategic options. The West Balkan region includes several countries: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Serbia, Albania, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo. First, an introduction on cooperation mechanisms has been made after which a scoping exercise has been carried out to identify which countries could be candidates for cooperation based on their potentials (or lack of potentials) for renewable energy. The analysis has focused on joint projects between MS and third countries as it is the only cooperation mechanism available to West Balkan countries, besides Croatia that recently entered the EU. Until now only a few MS and the West Balkan expressed their interest in cooperation. Within the article, renewable electricity surpluses in West Balkan countries are estimated and matched with MS that have expensive and low renewable electricity potentials. Finally, a study case on the joint project between Italy and Serbia elaborates costs and benefits analysis on a possible cooperation based on two scenarios: base case scenario in which Italy could develop local hydro resources and other scenario where Italy decide to engage in a cooperation with Serbia. |
