The Arctic as a resource base
What’s wrong with Russia’s official documents on the Arctic.
News
Publish date: September 13, 2009
Written by: Martina Novak
News
Recently, banks have withdrawn from lending to the construction of coal-power plants. A higher administrative court has also ruled in favour of a farmer who had challenged the construction plans for a power plant.
The result is a far-reaching stoppage of coal-power plant construction in Germany, which will mean and environmental boon as more plants will be required to work carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies into their construction plans.
Ingelheimer Aue, near Mainz
As banks are reluctant to loan the money to continue with the construction of a 823-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plant, worth €1 billion, the project is facing serious risks of being halted.
Barclays PLC, the British financial institution, has already withdrawn from the project. Kraftwerke Mainz-Wiesbaden AG (KMW AG), the utility company on whose power plant site the new station is being built, expressed serious concerns about the continuation of the project unless further financing can be secured anytime soon.
The plant was scheduled to be completed in 2013. Its construction began in May 2009, despite more than 45,000 individual protests.
North Rhine-Westphalia
A farmer who challenged E.ON, Germany`s largest utility company`s plans to build a 1,050 MW coal-fired power plant in Datteln, northern Germany, was proven right by the Higher Administrative Court for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
According to the court, E.ON`s plan failed to meet two essential criteria:
• There was no sufficient consideration of dangers stemming from the power plant for the local population
• The construction location was not envisaged for the construction of such a power station
As the plan for the plant from the city of Datteln likewise did not meet the prerequisites from the Parliament of Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia for a sustainable use of energy, the court finally declared it as invalid.
“Coal-fired power plants with unrestrained CO2 emissions are climate bombs. They will typically operate for 40-50 years, but retrofitting CO2 capture and storage – CCS – will be far more expensive than equipping the plants with it from the outset,” says Eivind Hoff of Bellona Europa.
“Yet none of the halted coal-fired power plants had serious plans for CCS. I think the recent developments are very encouraging to make utilities understand that no more coal-fired power plants will be accepted in the EU unless they are built with CCS and respect the most stringent limits for local pollution,” he says.
What’s wrong with Russia’s official documents on the Arctic.
As uranium supplies from Russia fall under the shadow of potential sanctions, and while Ukraine’s allies look to wean themselves off nuclear fuel produced by Moscow’s Rosatom corporation, owners of left-for-dead mines in the US are looking to revive their deposits.
The European Union doubled its purchases of Russian nuclear fuel in 2023, data from Eurostat and the UN’s international trade service Comtrade show.
The output of Russian nuclear power plants in 2023 decreased by 2.8% compared to 2022. A decrease in output occurred for the first time in 10 years a...