February 19, 2020 | Read more In 2018, the average temperature in the Czech Republic was 1.7 degrees higher than the average in 1981-2010. The summer was the hottest since 1961 and the drought was extreme – as described in the Czech Republic 2018 Report on the Environment prepared by the Ministry of the Environment. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said that the Czech Republic is doing everything it can to protect the climate.
February 17, 2020 | Read more Romania’s new national energy and climate plan (NECP) is sending incoherent signals regarding the country’s commitment for a just transition away from fossil fuels, finds an analysis by Bankwatch Romania.
February 10, 2020 | Read more Over the past year a new player has aggressively joined the Estonian energy debate: Fermi Energy, a private company promising fourth generation small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). The problem is that instead of solving the country’s energy and climate woes, the not-so-futuristic SMRs are creating new challenges.
February 5, 2020 | Read more Western Balkan countries are stuck in a loop of long, gloomy winters with extremely high air pollution. The number of times the air quality has exceeded the limit values over the last decade remains so high, that the very point of having those limit values is lost. In order to prevent episodes of air pollution that often reach values that are more than ten times above this limit, and to provide at least some level of protection for human health, additional urgent measures are required by the governments to supplement the long term strategies.
January 31, 2020 | Read more While both strategies nod towards climate change concerns and the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the NECP primarily aims towards a more advanced economy rather than a genuinely favourable state of the environment.
January 30, 2020 | Read more The Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development (HBOR) has recently started another court case against the decision of Croatia’s Information Commissioner before the High Administrative Court. In the contested decision, the Commissioner ordered HBOR to disclose information about its export credit projects to the environmental organization Green Istria. This court case adds to no fewer than 31 appeals that HBOR started against similar decisions by the Commissioner between 2015-2019. It lost all of them.
January 22, 2020 | Read more Serbia’s Ministry of Mining and Energy last week finally announced that its Regulation governing incentive measures for renewable energy and cogeneration is no longer in force.
January 20, 2020 | Read more “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” is an adage that decision-makers in the Western Balkans would do well to heed. This particularly applies to plans to bring online new coal power plants and the legal, economic and credibility risks these entail.
January 14, 2020 | Read more The Commission’s proposal for a Just Transition Fund is encouraging as fossil fuels have been excluded. Special attention should be given though to key elements such as its mode of governance, geographical scope, and the types of activities eligible for funding.
January 10, 2020 | Read more The 7.5 billion euros revealed today in a leak of the EU’s proposed Just Transition Mechanism can lead a sustainable and economically-fair move away from fossil fuels in Europe’s carbon-dependent regions, but only if local stakeholders are involved in planning the transformation and the funding is consistent with climate targets.
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