The energy ministry is preparing to make revisions to its prospective support framework for the renewable energy (RES) sector, the objective being to improve incentives for biomass unit investments, according to energypress sources.

The ministry had been planning to introduce a RES support framework featuring two capacity-related categories, one classifying projects with respective capacities of up to 5 MW as small investments and those over this level as major-scale investments. However, the planned revision will add a third category and essentially re-establish an older capacity break-up system. As a result, it will divide RES investments into categories of up to one MW, between one and five MW, and over 5 MW.

This set-up will help promote investments for biomass units of up to one MW by offering price-related incentives. Besides bigger investors, this approach also promises to open the RES sector’s door to cooperatives, farmer groups, and small to medium-sized professionals.

The energy ministry also intends to revise reference prices linked to various biomass utilization technologies.

All the aforementioned revisions have been taken into account by the ministry following observations made by various sector agencies and investors.

Besides the environmental benefits, biomass utilization as a renewable energy source is a major employment provider. In the EU, this sub-sector has created the greatest number of RES-sector jobs. At present, biomass utilization represents 40 percent of RES sector employment in the EU, or half a million jobs.