News
Publish date: March 19, 2009
Written by: Eivind Hoff
News
Bellona welcomes the consensus reached amongst EU leaders as a sign that climate change has become a top priority for the Union also in its budgetary priorities.
In total, €5billion will be reallocated from EU budget chapters that are under-spent, in particular the EU’s common agricultural policy, to infrastructure projects that are European political priorities and that will create new jobs.
Half of the €5bn will be made available for low-carbon projects: €1.050 million for seven CCS projects, €910 million for electricity interconnectors (helping the integration of renewable energy into the grid) and €565 million for offshore wind projects in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.
The other half will be spent on broadband infrastructure and gas interconnectors.
Although the EU recovery package still has to be approved by the European Parliament, which is due to vote on the package on May 5th, it will be hard to undo today’s deal. It follows a first proposal by the European Commission in November. Click here for a background article, here for information from the Council of Europe, and here for more details reported by the main European affairs newsweekly, the European Voice.
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.
After years of inaction, Germany is working on its Carbon Management Strategy to resolve how CCS can play a role in climate action in industry. At the end of February, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action published first key points and a proposal to amend the law Kohlenstoffdioxid Speicherungsgesetz (KSpG). Bellona Deutschland, who was actively involved in the previous stakeholder dialogue submitted a statement in the association hearing.
In the midst of a global discussion on whether natural gas should be used as a transitional fuel and whether emissions from its extraction, production, transport and use are significantly less than those from other fossil fuels, Russia has developed ambitious plans to increase its own production of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the Arctic – a region with 75% of proven gas reserves in Russia – to raise its share in the international gas trade.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our main focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution risks and climate change.