‘NER300' is the acronym of a subsidy programme that will be financed with the sales of 300 million EU Allowances from the so-called New Entrants Reserve of the European Emissions Trading Scheme. These 300 milllion EUAs represent a current market value of about 4.5 billion Euros. The total NER300 will be split in two phases, with the first round running now.

The EU plans to finance at least 34 innovative renewable energy projects and at least 8 CCS projects. Regarding CCS, some tens of project applications are expected. The final awarding will be quite complex. Applications have to meet certain criteria, explained in an EU Decision paper from November 2010.

There are 34 different categories in renewable energy, one to three projects will be awarded per category. In CCS, capture projects with power generation have a minimum size of 250 MW of capacity. Industrial CCS will have a minimum size of 500 kton CO₂ per year to be stored. Projects will be ranked according to ‘costs per unit performance', for instance per stored tonne of CO₂ or  kWh produced. Projects have to be operational before 2016, which might cause some problems for CCS projects.

In the Netherlands, the government will judge CCS proposals according to the EU criteria. Regarding renewable energy, they will also rate the contribution to Dutch innovation and economy. In The Netherlands KEMA will support the government, in Brussels the European Investment Bank will perform a financial and technical due diligence of each project submitted.

A maximum of 50% of the costs will be financed by NER300, counter- financed by the project developer and national governments. In total, NER300 expects an overall investment of almost 10 billion € in innovative renewables and CCS.

The second call for proposals is intended to be published in November 2012.

For more information, see the EU website and the Dutch website on NER300.