Posts

Showing posts from March, 2018

Dutch Government Decides to Cease Gas Production From Groningen Gas Field - A Legal Perspective

Image
Europe`s largest onshore gas field in the province of Groningen, Netherlands, will be shut down by 2030, the Dutch government decided last thursday, 29 March 2018. The decision is the latest move in a more-than-decade long saga of resistance against gas production in the Groningen region. Earth tremors and quakes triggered persistent local opposition to gas production. The production company NAM is showing little appetite to challenge the decision in court.

The Quo Vadis Study on the EU Gas Regulatory Framework – What does it tell us? (and what not?)

Image
By Gijs Kreeft, PhD Researcher on the Regulation of Power-to-Gas at the Groningen Centre of Energy Law The absence of a legislative proposal on the gas sector under the Clean Energy for All Europeans Package could be interpreted as a regulatory standstill in the EU gas market. Nothing, however, is less true. During the past 12 months, a deal has been struck between the European Commission and Gazprom through which the Russian gas giant committed itself to tune down its dominant behavior in Central and Eastern Europe, an information exchange mechanism has been established with regard to agreements in the field of energy by Member States with third countries (Decision (EU) 2017/684), a new Security of Supply Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/1938) has been adopted , and amendments to the 2009 Gas Directive have been proposed in light of North Stream 2. Earlier, in 2016, the Commission already decided on revised exemption conditions for the OPAL pipeline, capping the exempti

New Article `Wind Farm Waste in the EU, Denmark and the UK` published in OGEL 2 (2018)

Image
A new article titled `Wind Farm Waste - Emerging Issues with Decommissioning and Waste Regulation in the EU, Denmark and the United Kingdom` has been published in a special issue of OGEL. I had the pleasure of cooperating with Dr. Heyd Fernandes Mas and Ceciel Nieuwenhout, LLM for this. The abstract can be found below and the article is available here.

E.On and RWE are Reshaping the German Electricity Market

Image
Two of Germany`s biggest utility companies, E.On and RWE, yesterday announced plans to restructure their assets. Germany`s electricity market is liberalized, but still dominated by four big oligopolistic companies. Two of the four companies are now going to coordinate their activities even more to create monopoly-like structures in particular areas. According to the plans, RWE is only focussing on electricity production in the future, whereas E.On is going to deal only with electricity transmission and distribution as well as end-user supplies and will cease its electricity generation activities. The plans still need to be approved by European competition authorities and the German Federal Cartel Office. German municipalities reported to be highly sceptical of the deal.

German Federal Administrative Court Approves Of Diesel Car Ban - Cases BVerwG 7 C 26.16 BVerwG 7 C 30.17

Image
On Tuesday 27 February 2018, the German Federal Administrative court largely approved of measures taken in Duesseldorf and Stuttgart to ban Diesel cars from driving in particular areas of the cities. Earlier, lower administrative courts obliged the federal governments of North-Rhine Westphalia and Baden Wuertemberg to change their respective air quality plans, which feature measures to lower the NO2 concentration in ambient air in big cities. The two states appealed the decisions, but now lost in front of the Federal Administrative Court. The court pointed out that bans for Diesel cars in particular areas of German cities have to be implemented by the governments, but that such bans have to be proportionate.