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Showing posts from September, 2017

German Election Special: Party Positions on Energy and Climate

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As Germany is heading to the polls this week (Sunday 24 September 2017), the energy and climate law blog assesses  the election manifestos of the main political parties in Germany with a  view to energy and climate. What is Germany`s renewable energy future looking like? Is the German energy turnaround ( Energiewende) here to stay and how shall it be steered in the coming years?  How do the parties aim to combat climate change? 

Dutch Regulator ACM says Dutch TSO TenneT broke the law

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The Dutch energy regulator ACM issued an order today according to which the Dutch Transmission System Operator (TSO) TenneT was to blame for the big power outage in the Amsterdam area in 2015. One million people and several industries were affected by the outage, amongst them Tata Steel, who have launched a complaint with ACM. ACM now said thatTenneT acted in contradiction to a number of its legal obligations, above all the so called ‘enkelvoudige storingsreserve’.

10th Annual Legal Research Network Conference: 'Law and Sustainability' (Groningen, 13-15 September 2017)

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The Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen organizes the 10th annual Legal Research Network Conference on 13-15 September 2017 in cooperation with the Faculties of Law of the Universities of Bristol, Budapest (ELTE), Ghent, Göttingen, Groningen, Lille–Nord de France, Turku and Uppsala. The central theme of the conference is 'Law and Sustainability'. Registration is open via: http://www.rug.nl/rechten/congressen/archief/2017/legal-research-network/?lang=en

Changes to the French Onshore Wind Support Scheme: a tortuous pathway toward an ill-conceived auction regime ?

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By Romain Mauger, Post-doctoral fellow, Groningen Centre of Energy Law Onshore wind energy development in France was marked by a very high level of legal uncertainty caused by regulation volatility in the past years. This factor is one of the main to explain the volatility of annual wind energy new connections to the grid in France from 2006 to 2016, especially with a difficult time from 2011 to 2013 [1]. Regarding the support scheme, since 2001 onshore wind energy was supported by Feed-in-Tariffs (FiT) [2], but this has changed in 2017 after a rather difficult transition to Feed-in-Premiums (FiP). The following lines provide elements on the multiple steps of this policy change, portray its current results and raise some critics.