Archive

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
COMPETITION is intensifying to supply the planned new 615 MW power plant in Saurashtra, Gujurat, India, with fuel. Gujarat State Petronet Ltd is about to submit a feasibility report on laying a IND Rupees 1,650 million, 65-km, sub-sea gas pipeline connecting the mid-Tapti fields with the Gujurati port of Pipavav.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has found that Italy has breached the EU’s 1991 urban waste water directive by allowing discharges from the city of Milan to be released indirectly into environmentally sensitive areas without being subjected to specific treatment.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is expected this month (May) to announce a proposed directive boosting co-generation, although Eurelectric thinks it may at the same time moderate earlier targets for doubling the share of energy represented by the sector.

This has already been rejected as too ambitious by the European electricity industries association and although Brussels may keep to the overall target, which would see CHP rising to 18 per cent of total energy supply, it may abandon ideas that individual requirements should be imposed on Member States.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed abandoning its reliance in promoting renewables as a means to secure the European Union’s energy supplies, by proposing an expensive twin-track programme that boosts energy saving initiatives as well as diversifying production through green energy reforms.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commission-funded report has claimed that technological advances have made it feasible to roll-out the next phase of offshore wind turbines, which could generate 100 MW, dwarfing the capacity of the current 80 MW models.

The Concerted Action on Offshore Wind Energy in Europe (CA-OWEE) project has concluded that “the physical and environmental challenges are within the grasp of the offshore and wind energy industries,” although there are still problems posed by “market uncertainties.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATIONAL regulations in Norway are being challenged for allowing state electricity operators to secure unlimited concessions to exploit waterfalls for hydro-electric projects, whilst time limiting those available to private generating companies to 60 years.

The Surveillance Authority of the European Free Trade Area, (EFTA), may try to overturn the law at the EFTA court, which has precedence over Norwegian law.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FINDINGS of three EU funded research projects have concluded that water consumption could be reduced by as much as 90 per cent in certain economic sectors, namely tanneries, abandoned industrial sites and waste water management. The European Commission is now advising industry to further reduce their water consumption through internal recycling.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GREEK renewable energy company has been ordered to repay the equivalent of Drachma 9.4 million, plus interest, of the Drachma 13.8 million it was given by the European Commission in 1985 to instal a 300 kW wind energy converter on an Aegean island; the idea was to demonstrate the system for two years and then hand it over to an operator.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IRELAND’S dominant power supplier ESB and its Norwegian partner Statoil have agreed to sell 600MW of electricity on the open market, as the price of securing competition approval for their joint venture, setting up the Synergen gas-fuelled electricity plant in Dublin.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATURAL gas exploration companies working in the inhospitable Snøhvit field, off the far north coast of Norway, should be granted tax privileges, following acceptance of a scheme by the Surveillance Authority of the European Free Trade Area. Gas will be landed onshore via pipeline, cooled, then liquefied for ship transportation to international markets.…