News
Publish date: April 29, 2010
Written by: Veronica Webster
News
A CO2 EPS would impose a limit on CO2 emitted per kilowatt hour on power stations.
Environmentalists and certain industry stakeholders have been pushing for an EPS as an additional tool alongside the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) to drive investment in low carbon technologies such as CO2 capture and storage (CCS). At present, the CO2 price delivered by the ETS is too low to trigger such investments.
On April 26th, EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard told the European Parliament that an impact assessment of an EPS is on the blocks.
“We are initiating that work and I think that we could still do something at a common European level”, Hedegaard said.
Hedegaard has previously explained that an EPS would be possible through a planned 2015 revision of EU CCS legislation.
Supporters of an EPS have pushed for the forthcoming EU Industrial Emissions Directive to recognise that individual Member States are allowed to introduce this at a national level. The European Parliament environment committee will vote next week, Tuesday 4th May, as part of the Directive’s 2nd reading.
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.