European Commission to boost Gabreta smart grids project with €100mn

The EU’s Connecting Europe Facility financing mechanism has announced new funding for the Gabreta smart grids project, located between Czechia and Germany.

The Gabreta project, a Project of Common Interest (PCI), will receive support from the Facility of €100 million ($107.6 million).

Increasing numbers of renewable energy sources, electric mobility, and advances in sector coupling, as well as better service and more comfort for citizens depend on a modern, resilient and digitised grid, especially on the distribution system level.

To this end, the Gabreta project aims to accelerate the digitisation of the distribution grid by fostering cross-border cooperation between Germany (Bavaria) and the Czech Republic (South Bohemia and South Moravia). It will also open space on the grid by reducing bottlenecks in connection requests, improve grid controllability and enable new market solutions.

The project is mainly focused on modernising distribution networks, based primarily on smart grid technologies, digitisation and new elements of communication.

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The funding is part of a larger Commission proposal to invest €594 million ($639.2 million) of EU funds in eight cross-border energy infrastructure projects under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for Trans-European Networks for Energy. The Gabreta project is one of these eight.

The other projects include:

• The EU CCS Interconnector, a CO2 infrastructure project Gdansk in Poland, will receive €2.54 million ($2.73 million) for implementation studies
• The project to reinforce the Lonny-Achêne-Gramme electricity interconnector between France and Belgium will be awarded €1.22 million ($1.31 million)
• Four CO2 transport and storage projects scheduled for completion before the end of the decade; approximately €480 million ($516.5 million) will be granted
• The existing Depomures natural gas storage facility in Romania will receive funding worth €12.77 million ($13.66 million) to increase its working capacity and its daily injection and withdrawal rates

The financing announcement follows the release from the European Commission of the first list of energy infrastructure PCIs in line with the Green Deal.

The list covers a total of 166 projects to deliver cross-border energy infrastructures that can benefit from streamlined permitting and regulatory procedures and become eligible for funding from the Connecting Europe Facility to enable them to be accelerated.