THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

- welcomes the proposed revision of the Renewable Energy Directive and the subsidiarity grid accompanying the proposal

- reiterates the importance for the Union of taking into account the specific features of each region, supporting cost-effective solutions and demands that proposals to further increase the emission targets be subject to a thorough impact assessment, including the territorial dimension, in cooperation with the European Committee of the Regions.

- regrets the lack of further incentives for the setting up of renewable energy communities in order to incentivize collective self-generation and self-consumption of sources of renewable energies and proposes a new definition of community battery

- Calls for more cross border renewable energy projects beyond those planned under the TEN-E framework, involving local and regional authorities and supports new requirement for joint offshore energy planning and measures for linked integrated grid planning in Member States bordering sea basins

- believes sustainable production of biomass is necessary to ensure environmental and biodiversity protection; stresses nonetheless that the introduction of new and more stringent criteria applying to all existing small scale biomass, heat and power installations would undermine the stability of the legal framework

- welcomes the upcoming EU solar energy strategy

- highlights the key role of hydrogen and green molecules in the energy transition and supports measures to encourage the development of clean hydrogen market and envisaged certification of renewable hydrogen

- stresses that to achieve greater resource efficiency in a sustainable manner, renewable fuels and recycled carbon fuels can be a transition fuel in the short term