The directive 2001/77/EC, which is also known as RES directive, puts on European Committee the task of presenting the report, which says about mechanisms of support for renewable energy sources used by membership countries of European Union. The first report should appear till 27 October, but probably it may be also at the end on this year.

Ambitious aims

RES directive set for twenty-five countries of European Union for 2010 necessary quantity of producing electrical energy from renewable sources on the level of twenty one percent. This quantity as the average value concerns the whole European Union and is divided into individual aims, different for every membership countries. According to internal estimations (July 2004) done by the European Committee probably these aims will not be obtained. Production of electrical energy from big hydroelectric power stations will be fundamentally higher and only area of increasing the use of renewable energy sources is becoming technologies of not big scale, as: wind farms. It is not probably in this range to gain as high increase as would result from notations of mentioned directive.

Renewable energy sources and market conditions

In conditions of liberalized electrical energy market most technologies using renewable energy sources are not competitive. According to information concerning designed costs of producing electrical energy prepared by the International Energy Agency the cost of generation for coal is 35-60 $/MWh, and for gas - 40-63 dollars, but for renewable energy sources these costs are higher. In the case of using the wind it is necessary to count as much as 45-140 $/MWh, for small hydroelectric power stations 65-100 dollars, and for sun energy the cost can be even 200 dollars.

Using the unstable energy sources, as: wind farms, causes to appear many additional technical troubles. The first one is the necessity of protecting the access system for energy in the case the wind does not blow. This kind of reserve must only come from the conventional sources, so from: thermal power plants, which must be kept in hot reserve. The result of it is additional high costs and not eliminating emissions of pollution. Most indispensable reserve in the conventional power plants (according to VGB) is as high as eighty percent. Another problem, which is caused by wind power stations, is also the unstable work of transmission system, because of this problem recently Germany has nearly had a big breakdown of the system. Furthermore, the necessity of attaining to the net in the first order just renewable energy sources disturbs a possibility of transmission through energy systems earlier contracted delivers of energy from the conventional sources what seriously violates the basic rules of free market.

Towards the direction of European Internal Energy Market

In European Union there is the agreement concerning the increase of sharing renewable energy sources in the production of current and the continuous supporting for using these sorts of technologies. Individual countries of European Union make it in different ways. It is made by special designed tariffs, which assure to finance these kinds of sources, or by mechanisms of special certificates. This kind of European vision and obligation to introduce the support systems based on market mechanism is indispensable for assuring cohesion of whole European market and forcing to develop the best technologies of using renewable energy sources. The only review of using technologies is already well step in the right direction.

STANISŁAW TOKARSKI

JERZY JANIKOWSKI