Intelligent energy
- Europe is an EU programme established to support implementation of EU legislation (it does not finance hardware). It is intended to promote efficient use of energy and use of renewable energies. It tackles market barriers and raises awareness of European energy policy and legislation among energy providers, promoters, advisers, trainers, agencies, policy-makers and users, including at local and regional levels.
It is aimed to address key energy challenges facing the EU by answering questions such as:
- How to take advantage of market opportunities for more renewable energy?
- How to increase the uptake of new technologies and of more energy intelligent habits?
- How to convert EU policy on energy efficiency and renewables into action on the ground?
The new phase will begin in March 2007. It will be a 7 year programme instead of 4 years as the one closing now. According to the information we received, the basic agreement with member states has been reached over the last few days. A novelty is that there is a proposal to raise the EU co-financing level from 50% to 75% for some of the parts of the programme so that SMEs can participate more easily.
DG Employment encourages SME organisations to lobby their own member states to provide accompanying measures for the promotion of this programme.
You can visit the dedicated website of DG TREN: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/intelligent/index_en.html as well as ManagEnergy initiative, http://www.managenergy.net.
