Search Results for: Germany

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FIRST-EVER multilateral treaty covering the Balkans has been signed in Athens, creating a European Energy Community, linking the gas (and electricity) policies of south-eastern Europe with those of the European Union (EU). Indeed, under the treaty, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria and Kosovo must apply EU energy legislation, including related environmental and competition laws.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE USA’s O2Diesel Corporation will work with Spain’s Abengoa Bioenergy to sell O2Diesel’s ethanol diesel fuel blend in Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. Abengoa will buy more than 10% of O2 stock with Euro 3 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has opened a formal state aid investigation into Hungary’s long-term power purchase agreements, concluded between state-owned electricity network operator MVM Rt and foreign-controlled power generators. These deals say MVM Rt must buy a fixed quantity of electricity at a fixed price, guaranteeing, said Brussels, a “return on investment to the generators without any risk”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE POLISH government has been alarmed by a call from Russia’s Gazprom to renegotiate its long-term natural gas supply contract, which is supposed to expire in 2022. Poland’s freshly-appointed prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said he was baffled by the move: “It’s hard to understand this step.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) has declared illegal a lorry ban on a key motorway in the Austrian Tyrol, linking Germany to Italy. Judges have declared that the regional law breaks European Union (EU) treaty rules on free movements of goods and so must be lifted.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has launched a research project aimed at developing a virtual-reality unit, training construction workers in using potentially dangerous heavy plant, without the risk of injuring their co-workers. Researchers are currently designing a computer-aided training programme, an electronic simulator, and even a virtual-reality platform or cabin allowing workers to use controls mirroring those on a piece of plant.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONCERNS about delays in the implementation of a major piece of European Union (EU) environmental legislation have sparked a review by the European Commission, and will encourage it to pursue legal action in the courts. The law in question is the 1996 integrated pollution prevention and control directive, which insists large EU industrial and agricultural installations obtain operating permits – issued only if the best available techniques on controlling emissions are in use.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the acquisition of joint control of seafood firm Nordsee, of Germany, by UK subsidiary of Japanese investment bank Nomura, a private investor Mr Heiner Kamps, and TML-Invest, of Switzerland, (owned by German food company the Müller Group).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AIR travel may give you thrombosis but sometimes it can also deliver real gains to medical science. A group of European scientists has discovered an odd fact: that air passing over an aircraft’s wing to give it lift behaves like blood circulating in a human body when it meets an implanted device.…

KEITH NUTHALL
GERMANY – which until recently had a Green-Socialist government – is home to five of the 10 dirtiest electricity plants in the European Union (EU), a report from conservation group WWF claims. Its assessment of carbon-dioxide emissions from power stations found Germany’s lignite Frimmersdorf RWE plant second most polluting, behind Greece’s lignite plant at Agios Dimitrios.…