EU Directive 2001/77/EC on the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in the internal electricity market requires that member states increase, by 2010, their gross national electricity consumption derived from renewable energy sources to the thresholds outlined in the annex to the directive. My requirement will be to have sufficient renewable energy based generating capacity in place to generate this volume without reliance on imports.
The current national target for renewables is to add an additional 500 megawatts of generating capacity to the grid by 2005 and additional capacity in offshore wind and biomass-fed combined heat and power plant by 2006. This capacity, together with generating capacity from existing renewable energy plant, as defined in the directive, could increase the percentage of green electricity to over 12% by 2006 if all AER V and AER VI projects are built.
A 10% target is a more conservative assessment to allow for planned projects which do not proceed for reasons which cannot be identified at this time.