European banks: it’s time to quit coal in Ukraine
February 13, 2015 | Read more
In a street action being held today in Kiev as part of the Global Divestment Day, Ukrainians call on public and private investors to end financing for fossil fuels, in particular coal, and instead invest in renewable energy sources which represent the only independent source for the country.
Montenegro’s government is pushing hard for the construction of a new unit at the Pljevlja lignite-fired power plant. NGOs are encouraging the major shareholder company to not give in to this pressure, writes Jelena Marojević Galić from Green Home.
Natural gas left, right and centre at Energy Union conference in Riga
February 11, 2015 | Read more
Massive infrastructure for transporting natural gas is shaping up to be a centre piece of the Energy Union put forward by the Juncker Commission. This was also the impression Bankwatch campaigners had at an Energy Union conference in Riga last week.
In a file launched by Bankwatch in 2014, a Romanian court annulled [ro] 27 deforestation permits last week, preventing 22 hectares of forest in the country’s south-west to be cut for the expansion of an open-pit coal mine.
New arrests should dampen Serbia’s appetite for coal
February 4, 2015 | Read more
Corruption cases continue to haunt Serbia’s coal sector as a new round of arrests last week has shown. They also illustrate how the dependence on coal creates vulnerabilities for Serbia’s energy sector and potentially its financiers, in particular in the aftermath of last year’s floods.
On February 2, during the annual meeting between civil society and the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) Board of Directors, the EIB revealed that the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) was among its priority projects for 2015 in the Balkans.[*] The Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, planned to stretch from Greece via Albania and the Adriatic Sea to Italy, is part of the Southern Gas Corridor, a chain of projects meant to bring natural gas to Europe from the Shah Deniz offshore gas field in Azerbaijan.
