Paris, 9^th December 2010

Developing renewable energy -along with ambitious co-development projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, secure our energy future, and boost sustainable development- is a vital part of the fight against climate change.

A Climate-Justice plan is crucial to the success of these plans, and especially ambitious projects are required in the Mediterranean. 

In Paris on 5^th July last year, in the presence of Jean-Louis Borloo and Henri Guiano, twelve companies signed a draft partnership agreement to investigate the feasibility of a transmission network between the north and south rims of the Mediterranean, and to develop interconnections all around the Mediterranean.

This partnership was made concrete on 9^th December 2010 with the creation of Medgrid, an SAS limited company with 20 shareholders: Abengoa, Alstom grid, Areva renouvelables, Atos WorldGrid, CDC infrastructures, EDF, Ineo, Nemo, Nexans, Nur Energie, ONE, Pan Med trading and Investment, Prysmian, Red Eléctrica, RTE, Siemens, Soitec, Taqa Arabia, Terna and Walid Elias Establishment. 

The French development agency, AFD, is to conclude a separate strategic and financial partnership agreement with Medgrid.  Medgrid is working towards the Mediterranean Solar Plan aiming to build 20GW of renewable electricity generation capacity by 2020 -especially from solar sources to the south and east of the Mediterranean.

Around 5GW of this will be exported towards Europe to help increase the viability of these power stations and to help meet European renewable energy targets. 

Transmitting electricity from these projects towards consumption areas requires new linking infrastructure joining power stations to local networks and to Europe via submarine high-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines. 

The Medgrid engineering department, set up for an initial period of 3 years, aims to:

• Draft a technical and financial plan to implement a trans-Mediterranean network by 2020, leading to some concrete projects;
• Promote a regulatory framework for electricity exchanges that is favourable to investment and the viability of projects on the southern rim of the Mediterranean;
• Assess the benefits of investment in infrastructure and electricity exchanges on growth, economic activity and jobs;
• Develop technical cooperations over electricity network projects with countries on the southern rim of the Mediterranean;
• Promote European technology and industry on the global market, especially in the areas of power generation from renewable sources, the transmission of direct current and high-voltage submarine cables.