This year, Energinet.dk has introduced a new initiative and opted to prepare an environmental assessment of the ForskEL-programme and the projects funded by the calls.

In general, society tends to focus increasingly on the environment, for example in the form of strategic environmental assessments (SEAs) of construction pro-jects and workplace environment in the form of environmental management or CSR. An environmental assessment in connection with the ForskEL-programme is also highly relevant as the programme precisely aims at supporting environmentally friendly power generation. Since Energinet.dk considers the environmental dimension a very important part of the ForskEL-programme and in order to be at the forefront of the development and the requirements we may be asked to comply with in future, Energinet.dk has thus chosen to take the first step towards setting up a system for environmentally assessing the ForskEL-programme.

As far as we know, similar assessments of funding programme have never been implemented before, and it has therefore been necessary to build up the system from scratch. The system was developed in collaboration with the University of Southern Denmark, which has strong competencies precisely within the area of environmental assessment and life-cycle analysis (LCA).