Belgrade incinerator plans raise burning questions
December 19, 2018 | Read more
The planned Belgrade waste incinerator in Serbia, being considered for financing by the EBRD, EIB and IFC, is incompatible with increasing waste prevention and recycling rates and endangers the already precarious livelihoods of the 12,000 people who currently live from waste-picking in the city. The recently published environmental and social impact assessment for the project fails to resolve either of these issues, as well as numerous others.
In the middle of last week, negotiators in this year’s UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, were scrambling to agree on guidelines for the Paris Agreement that would ensure global warming is capped at no more than 2 degrees. At the same time, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), one of the world’s key development banks, adopted a new energy lending strategy that ends its support for coal but keeps the door wide open for gas. Ioana Ciuta of CEE Bankwatch Network takes a closer look.
State of play with the energy transformation in Romania
December 13, 2018 | Read more
Europe’s commitment to the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development means that the EU must drive an energy transformation, but in Romania, inadequate financial support and a lack of political will still stand in the way of progress.
Challenges of communicating the energy transformation in Latvia [Video]
December 12, 2018 | Read more
Renewable energy has gotten a bad rap in Latvia. Since the construction of hydroelectric power stations during the Soviet era to the recent installment of the first wind parks and the country’s feed-in tarrif system, the ‘mandatory procurement scheme,’ renewables have been used for nefarious purposes like fuelling populism during election campaigns.
Another half a million euros for coal from Romania’s state budget
December 12, 2018 | Read more
A Government Decision granting RON 2 775 722 (EUR 596 000) to Oltenia Energy Complex to expropriate the land needed for the planned Craiova Power Plant ash storage expansion has been put into public debate by the Ministry of Energy.
In Slovakia, a shining example of EU funds for renewables and families
December 11, 2018 | Read more
There is a sad joke in Slovakia that the country could become a museum for renewable energy sources (RES). Not because the Slovak physicist Aurel Stodola invented in 1928 the world’s oldest heat pump that still powers Geneva’s city hall, but because of its antiquated energy policy that lacks systematic support for renewables at the local and national levels.
