Search Results for: Russia

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels, and KEITH NUTHALL

1. The Commission is a keen supporter of creating increased gas storage capacities. But who should pay for developing these facilities?

The Commission believes that investment in storage should be left to the market, and the costs allocated through market forces.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is moving towards supporting environment-friendly road transport, rather than dedicating resources to promoting public transport, a European Parliament debate organised by the Automobile and Society Forum, has heard. The European Commission is currently reviewing its 2001 transport white paper and its working papers have noted "disappointment" over the results of the EU’s pro-public transport policies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AS the European Union (EU) and Russia prepared to meet on November 21 to discuss future energy relations, EU energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs has called for the Russians to provide more technical information on its supplies and markets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has already started considering the potential shape of the eighth framework programme on research (which would start in 2014), even as the final details of its seventh predecessor are still being thrashed out.

Brussels’ directorate general (DG) for research commissioned a study, and it has recommended that the next big EU research programme look well beyond the shores of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.…

by Alan Osborn

A string of trade deficits by European food and drink producers was reversed in 2005 thanks to a rise of 5.2% in exports – the best performance since 2000, says the EU Confederation of Food and Drink Industries (CIAA).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said he wants to significantly increase Russia’s energy exports towards Asia. He said at a meeting of the Moscow-based VALDAI Discussions Club: "Asian countries currently account for only 3 percent of our energy exports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN UNLIKELY alliance is forming in response to the European Commission’s plans to increase the use of biomass in Europe’s energy mix: the European timber industry and environmentalists.

Normally at loggerheads, if you excuse the pun, the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) and the Worldwide Find for Nature (WWF) have combined forces to recommend that the energy sector’s exploitation of biomass grow in a sustainable way

After all both sides have crucial interests at stake: CEPI is worried about demand for timber and wood waste rising so fast that not only do prices increase sharply, but that the simple availability of forest products is put at risk; the WWF is concerned about the dash to biomass uprooting ecosystems in its wake, encouraging logging in a continent which seemed to have reached some kind of equilibrium between nature conservation and forest clearance.…

BY MARK ROWE

IN the years that followed the turn of the century, the Ukrainian economy was an optimistic place. Even two years ago there was a political certainty that encouraged investment from abroad and galvanised domestic paint companies to venture their capital on medium-term plans and encouraged the wave of acquisitions that snapped up several of Ukraine’s brand-name paint groups.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has unveiled European Commission plans to next year launch comprehensive legislation boosting effective carbon capture and storage.

The laws would remove legal barriers impeding research and development into this environmental technology and would also lay down rules on liability, for instance, if stored CO2 leached into the environment.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is planning to boost to the Russian car market by pumping up to Euro 300 million into the Russian Standard Bank, financing existing auto loans, and enabling the bank to make Euro 300 million’s worth of new car loans – worth more than 30,000 smaller autos.…