Tag: energy infrastructure

Without early investment signals, Europe faces a ‘lost decade’ of climate and energy policy inaction between 2020-2030, culminating in a mind-bogglingly expensive sprint to decarbonise in the last two decades before 2050, according to a new report by the European association of electricity producers, Eurelectric.

The European Union has agreed on a streamlined approval process to speed up strategic energy pipelines and grids, the European Commission said on Wednesday (28 November).

Experimental technology to capture, store and bury carbon emissions in geological formations is in line to receive a payout of as much as €1.37 billion from the EU’s energy infrastructure package, EurActiv has learned. 

Clean energy projects in rural areas are still being held back by administrative burdens, one year after EU member states began implementing their National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs), EurActiv has learned. However, Brussels believes the situation is improving.

A new multi-billion-euro EU fund for transport, energy and telecommunications infrastructure is causing concern among regions, which fear being sidelined by national authorities when it comes to allocating the money. EurActiv France reports.

Hungary plans to concentrate on the big picture of EU energy policy as it takes on the EU's rotating presidency in January. Energy will feature prominently at the new presidency's first EU summit on 4 February.

The European Commission is planning to introduce a fast-track procedure for permitting energy infrastructure projects of European interest, according to a draft proposal seen by EurActiv.

EU energy ministers will meet at the beginning of next week for informal discussions which are expected to shed light on their positions related to the EU's upcoming new energy efficiency action plan. 

The European Commission is waiting to hear from an expert group before deciding on a possible legislative framework for smart grids. But a high-ranking official cautioned that any potential regulation would only emerge from industry demand.

The European Commission will present the priorities of its 2010-2014 energy action plan during a meeting of energy ministers at the end of May.

As Iceland appears to on a fast track to join the European Union, analysts are coming up with exotic ways of overcoming the main obstacle to the island country's accession – a multi-billion euro compensation package for British and Dutch savers hit by the collapse of the Icesave bank.

"We have no interest in relying on a transit country, whichever it is," French MP Jean-Jacques Guillet (UMP), co-author with Socialist MP Tony Dreyfus of a report on energy security in Europe entitled 'Should we be afraid of Russia?', told EurActiv France in an interview.

The European Commission is proposing to increase monitoring of national energy infrastructure investments in key areas like biofuels, nuclear energy, gas and carbon dioxide transport and storage.

Eight Baltic Sea states last week (17 June) launched an action plan to connect Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to EU energy networks, providing a signpost for the Swedish Presidency's agenda for the Baltic Sea region.

Billions of EU taxpayers' money have been pumped into the fossil fuel industry over the last five years, environmentalists have warned in a report published ahead of a European Parliament vote on the Union's proposed €5 billion economic recovery plan.

"A larger, well-interconnected market receiving supplies from a variety of exporters is expected to be the best insurance" against gas delivery disruptions, writes Arno Behrens, a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), in a March paper.

The European Parliament yesterday (3 February) endorsed a comprehensive blueprint for the bloc's future energy policy, including more ambitious targets on climate change and renewable energies in proposals due to be submitted to EU leaders next month.

Households and neighbourhoods feeding small-scale electricity and heat into a decentralised European energy grid: this is the vision developed by proponents of microgeneration. Yet at present, the EU's energy system remains centralised and dominated by large power plants. 

The electricity grid could become a type of internet, in that everyone who is connected will be able to "upload and download packages of electricity" to and from the network, according to Dutch researcher Jos Meeuwsen from Eindhoven Technical University.

A pan-European plan to safeguard critical infrastructure against terrorist attacks in areas including energy, health, communication and transport was backed on 10 July 2007 by the European Parliament. However, MEPs also declared that responsibility for protecting critical infrastructure still rests primarily with national governments and private stakeholders.

WWF has released its 2007 'Dirty Thirty' report, which ranks Europe's 30 worst power stations in terms of climate-polluting emissions. Combined, they account for 10% of all CO2 emissions in the EU. Germany and the UK each have ten plants on the list, all of which are coal-fired. 

As one of the world's largest importers of oil, gas and coal, the EU is a major player on the international energy market - However, it remains a dwarf on the political stage as member states keep the upper hand on foreign policy. With external dependence on imports forecast to grow steadily, the EU has started to integrate energy aspects into relations with third countries. EurActiv brings an overview of relations with key regions for supply and transit.

The two French utilities propose to sell key stakes in their natural-gas business in Belgium to ease objections voiced by Brussels over their proposed merger.

The Council has adopted new guidelines on cross-border energy transmission for EU25. 286 infrastructure projects were selected to improve gas and electricity interconnections within the EU and with neighbouring countries.