Shifting financial flows is crucial to global efforts to combat climate change. The European Commission claims that its proposals for the post-2020 EU budget are in line with the Paris Agreement. However, support for fossil fuels remains in the pipeline of future budget negotiations, as revealed today in the ‘EU Toxic Funding Awards’.
The Polish electricity grid operator has just published the official preliminary results of the first capacity market auction in Poland to award contracts to power plants from 2021 onwards. Capacity mechanisms, which are supposedly intended to ensure supply in case extra power is needed, are often used as backdoor subsidies for the most uneconomic power plants, which are also the least efficient and most polluting. As such, they are a source of additional profit for the utilities on top of their regular revenues from the actual supply of electricity.
In a letter to the European Commission sent last week, environment ministers representing 10 EU Member States have called upon the EU’s executive to clearly support a target of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050 and propose a higher 2030 target in the draft long-term climate strategy to be published on 28 November.
European coal companies including RWE, EPH, and PGE, continue to push the cost of dirty energy onto society, with air pollution from their coal plants burdening people across Europe with both health problems and billions in costs, according to modelling detailed in a new report.
The General Court of the European Union has decided today to annul the European Commission’s decision not to raise objections to the aid scheme establishing a ‘capacity market’ in the United Kingdom. The ruling puts into question many capacity mechanisms in place across Europe, including the Polish capacity market which is based on the UK model.
The European Parliament has called today in its plenary session for a larger long-term EU budget than that proposed by the European Commission. They also ask for the share of the EU’s budget dedicated to climate action to increase from 25% to 30%.
Today, the Luxembourg NGOs -ASTM, Greenpeace, Mouvement Ecologique and natur&ëmwelt- together with Wemove.eu and Climate Action Network Europe, showed their support to the families and young people who are suing the European institutions for their failure to adequately prevent harmful climate impacts by delivering a petition to the plaintiffs of the People’s Climate Case.
Today at an Economic and Financial Affairs Council, EU ministers discussed their commitments to international climate finance ahead of the climate summit in Katowice (COP 24).
The European Commission claims that the next EU budget should tackle common challenges, including climate change. But unless the EU climate-proofs the entire EU budget, it will continue to prop up fossil gas and contribute to global warming. The ‘EU Toxic Funding Awards’, launched today, unveil the worst EU funding proposals currently in the pipeline of the future budget negotiations.
The real price we all pay for Turkey’s coal is too high, shows CAN Europe’s new study “The Real Costs of Coal: Muğla”. The research is a case study on one of the country’s oldest coal power infrastructures with numerous lignite mines and three coal-fired power plants in Muğla city. The outcomes of the research demonstrate the urgency with which plans for the expansion of coal mines in the region must be abandoned, and the three plants retired instead of getting life extensions.
Nicolas Derobert
Communications Coordinator
nicolas /at/ caneurope.org
Work: +32 2894 4673
Mobile: +32 483 621 888
Stevan Vujasinović
Communications Coordinator for Southeast Europe
stevan /at/ caneurope.org
Mobile: +381 (0)63 390 218
Goksen Sahin
Communications Coordinator
goksen /at/ caneurope.org
Work: +32 2893 0827
Mobile: +32 468 453 920
