News
Publish date: July 15, 2010
Written by: Ilias Vazaios
News
The bill should provide the necessary legal certainty in the first place for Vattenfall’s planned €1.5 billion CCS plant in Jänschwalde, scheduled to start operating in 2015.
According to the announcement the German government recognises that CCS technology is ‘indeed necessary to achieve brave emission reductions’. Testing the potential of CCS ‘opens an important perspective for climate protection as coal-fired power stations are bound to remain the most important form of power generation in the years to come’. Furthermore, according to the declaration, CCS could become applied in other sectors of industrial production, such as steel plants and chemical plants.
This new draft bill signifies an effort to resurrect the discussion around effective CO2 storage in Germany which stopped abruptly before last year’s general elections due to local concerns. Indeed the proposed bill confirms that municipalities will be receiving financial compensation as a result of CO2 storage occurring in their territory. Furthermore other concerns such as potential conflicts with geothermal applications and energy storage, property protection issues and operator risks are also ‘comprehensively considered’. These are positive steps forward towards addressing local concerns.
The bill envisages an expert evaluation of the technology to the German Parliament in 2017 so that a new law could be subsequently drafted for expanded application of CCS.
Access the announcement of the German Environment and Economy Ministers on the new CO2 storage bill here (in German)
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.