Search Results for: Climate change

European Union (EU) prime-ministers and presidents meeting last night in Brussels agreed a new emissions policy and tried to reassure high energy European industries that the free allocation of emission certificates will not expire after 2020.

The EU’s European Council, its leading policy-making body, agreed that “existing measures will continue after 2020 to prevent the risk of carbon leakage due to climate policy, as long as no comparable efforts are undertaken in other major economies, with the objective of providing appropriate levels of support for sectors at risk of losing international competitiveness.”…

Italy’s refiners are suffering from an approximate 30% decrease in national demand for refined petroleum products since 2000, according to data from oil refiners association Unione Petrolifera. They are also struggling with refinery overcapacity for refined crude oil and byproducts in both Europe and Italy; and increasing competition from newer, high-output refineries in emerging economies, including in China, India and the Middle East.…

THE INCOMING president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has united the Commission’s portfolios of energy and climate action, nominating Spain’s Miguel Arias Cañete as energy and climate commissioner. If confirmed by the European Parliament, he will serve for the next five years.…

The European Commission has asked Germany to stop allowing tax free legacies to Germany-based charities, if it does not offer the same rights for legacies to charities in foreign European Union (EU) member states. Brussels says this breaks EU capital movement rules.…

DISRUPTIVE technologies engender organisational change by definition. But the wholesale virtualisation of telco networks and services involved with network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) is likely to bring profound transformation.
And with major top and bottom line benefits available to telcos defending their turf against OTT (over-the-top) providers and internet-systems, it would be foolish for operators to ignore the potential of NFV and SDN.…

THE VIRTUALISATION of telecommunications networks may offer new technology suppliers a chance to break into the biggest telco markets, but by doing so, they may help established large players become truly global services. That’s the prediction of Ian Maclean, vice president for strategy and marketing, at Mavenir Systems, a Texas-based technology company that is busy rolling out network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) systems to forward-looking telcos.…

LIGNITE power station units are still being built and modernised in the European Union (EU), raising warnings from environmentalists that this could negate EU emissions controls. There are lignite projects in various stages of approval, planning or construction in Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovenia, for instance.…

INTERNATIONAL Financial Reporting Standards’ (IFRS) are not perfect, but their benefits to the European Union (EU) have outweighed their costs, an Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) event in Brussels heard on September 25. The European Commission is carrying out its first public consultation on the impact of IFRS in the European Union (EU), seeking formal comments by October 31, helping it generate policy proposals by the end of this year.…

THE NEW European Union (EU) agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan has promised to start preparing to abolish milk production constraints as a matter of urgency when he takes up his post on November 1. At a confirmation hearing in Brussels on October 2, he promised European Parliament agriculture committee members that small farmers with limited incomes would be particular beneficiaries of the planned end of the dairy quota regime from March 2015.…

IT is often said that the UK and USA are separated by a common language, but there are real and clear differences between the two countries’ approaches to developing combined head and power (CHP). This is today firmly entrenched as part of the UK energy mix but many in the industry would argue that this is in spite of rather than because of the approach taken by ministers.…