Archive

KEITH NUTHALL
THE CANADIAN government has hit back at criticism at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) from textile and clothing exporting countries that it (and other importing nations) have dragged their feet over abolishingtion of quotas under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States has rebuffed criticism at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) from textile and clothing exporting countries that they deliberately delayed abolishing quotas under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC). In a note to the WTO, mirroring a similar defence by Canada, the super-power rejected claims made by the International Textiles and Clothing Bureau (ITCB), representing exporting countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) appears to be losing its anger over the failure of the recognised Greek Cypriot government of southern Cyprus to support reunification with their Turkish neighbours, with the European Investment Bank (EIB) providing Euro 235 million for water, energy, and IT improvements.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
The European Investment Bank has announced a new commitment to supporting renewable energy, pledging to increase its lending for RE by up to 50 per cent of its total financing for electricity generation in the EU by 2010.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is to put new emphasis on renewable energy projects saying that the case for RE was “particularly challenging in the formerly planned economies which are relatively well endowed with traditional energy resources, and generally have low tariffs for energy.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SIGNIFICANT progress has been made in forging a cross-border energy market in the newly expanded European Union (EU), with the EU Council of Ministers for energy striking political agreement over a regulation on gas networks. This harmonises the conditions for accessing gas transmission infrastructure, specifying third party access, rules on capacity allocation, congestion management and the release of transmission information required for gas providers to use foreign systems.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE DUTCH government should be censured by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for excessively restricting hazardous waste exports earmarked for energy generation in another country via incineration, an ECJ advocate general has advised. Francis Jacobs criticised a Dutch rule blocking exports if more than 20 per cent of the waste could be recovered in the Netherlands.…

KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Biomass Industry Association and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report has claimed that using the full potential of biomass energy from farms and forests could power 100 million homes, providing 15 per cent of developed countries’ energy requirements by 2020, compared with today’s one per cent.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL Standardisation Organisation (ISO) technical report has advised on reducing safety hazards in using hydrogen for home and office heating, electricity generation and transport. The report ‘basic considerations for the safety of hydrogen systems’ describes dangers associated with the gas and discusses approaches to mitigate hydrogen hazards.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union needs to set firm long term targets for 2020 regarding the development of renewable energy, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and “give energy markets long-term investment security”, the head of the European Environment Agency (EEA) has said.…