Archive

Keith Nuthall
NICARAGUA has announced its third stage of quota liberalisation under the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Textile and Clothing.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
THE OWNERS of 20 textile factories in Newcastle, South Africa, have threatened to relocate to nearby Lesotho after being instructed to eliminate dangerous working conditions and pay the minimum wage by the country’s department of labour.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN has been ordered by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to “devise, as appropriate, measures to prevent pollution of the marine environment” maybe resulting from the operational launch of a new MOX (mixed oxide fuel) plant, in Sellafield, next summer.…

KEITH NUTHALL
EURELECTRIC, the EU power industry federation, has embarked on a sophisticated political manoeuvre to save public procurement reforms to the EU’s utilities directive from being rejected at the hands of conservative and Christian Democrat MEP’s.

Oddly, the opposition of the parliament’s European Peoples Party bloc to the changes is based on an objection that Eurelectric shares; to amendments from the parliament’s internal market committee that would force power corporations to take account of social and environmental concerns when issuing a tender.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE RATE of increase in biogas production in the European Union is much lower than that required to meet targets written into the European Commission’s white paper on renewable energy, the EU’s Eurobserv’ER(NOTE TO SUBS:CASE IS CORRECT) monitoring system has claimed.…

From Alan Osborn
The fashionable term in setting up international energy projects these days is “flexible mechanisms” of which the best known is the trade in emission reductions, or carbon credits. The Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, which guides implementation of the Convention, laid down emission reduction targets for industrialised countries but allowed flexibility to meet them through the purchase of emission credits from poorer countries.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank is lending a town in northern Sweden Euro 33 million to build a biomass fuelled combined heat and power station, which will consume a fuel that is widely available in the area: timber and wood chips.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INCREASING political pressure is being applied on eastern European governments to undertake root-and-branch reforms to promote energy effieciency and environmental performance within their utilities and industries, including the raising of gas and oil prices.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe recently addressed the issue, with its Committee on Sustainable Energy and the Committee on Environmental Policy agreeing to produce guidelines on price reforms for the region.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EURELECTRIC, the EU power industry federation, has embarked on a sophisticated political manoeuvre to save public procurement reforms to the EU’s utilities directive from being rejected at the hands of conservative and Christian Democrat MEP’s.

Oddly, the opposition of the parliament’s European Peoples Party bloc to the changes is based on an objection that Eurelectric shares; to amendments from the parliament’s internal market committee that would force utilities to take account of social and environmental concerns when issuing a tender.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ruled that tax breaks granted to German nuclear power operators, to help them build up reserves for the eventual decommissioning of their plants and the safe disposal of nuclear waste, do not actually constitute the payment of unfair and illegal state aid.…