February 24, 2020 | Read more The government has approved a national energy strategy that makes it the first country in the Western Balkans to consider a coal phase-out before 2030.
February 20, 2020 | Read more A just transition for Slovakia’s Upper Nitra is already underway. But turning plans into projects which can actually bring about this transition will be no easy feat. One of the challenges ahead will be to ensure that there is both enough money invested in the region and a sufficient number of good quality projects–projects that don’t lock in carbon-intensive technologies–that support local people.
February 20, 2020 | Read more EU leaders hold today a special European Council meeting where they will discuss and maybe agree on the size and structure of the EU budget for the period 2021-2027. Regardless of the size, current proposals for the EU budget of the next decade fall short of ambitious climate action.
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.
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