British lobbying to reduce monitoring of EU countries’ action on climate change has sparked outrage among MEPs and environmentalists.
EU states agreed last October to cut their carbon emissions 40% by 2030, but a UK plan co-authored with the Czech Republic proposes that countries’ emissions cuts should only be overseen with a ‘light touch’ regime with a diminished role for Brussels.
Westinghouse, the Japanese-US atomic group, is pressing the EU to introduce competition rules that will break eastern Europe’s dependence on Russian nuclear fuel.
While the crisis in Ukraine has focused attention on Europe’s vulnerability to a cut in supplies of gas from Russia, Westinghouse argues that Brussels must also respond to similar security risks posed by Moscow’s control of nuclear fuel in the eastern EU.
The EU has 18 Russian-designed nuclear power plants
Following the loss of the Malaysian airliner last week, European leaders are once again wrestling with the question of how to respond to Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.
They are reluctant to get tough, much more so than the United States.
The EU could easily end up doing itself a lot of economic harm, most obviously if Russia were to respond by turning down the gas.
More than five years of international intrigue ended with a whimper on April 10th as ČEZ, a Czech utility company, officially cancelled the planned expansion of the Temelín nuclear power plant, 120 km south of Prague in the South Bohemia region. The project was undone by a fall in electricity prices and the spectre of a botched state energy scheme in years past.
PRAGUE, April 9 (Reuters) - A tender for the $10-15 billion expansion of the Czech Republic's Temelin nuclear power plant should be wound down and replaced with a new contest with more bidders, President Milos Zeman said on Wednesday.
The plan to build two reactors at the site has been undermined by falling power prices and the government's unwillingness to provide price guarantees to Temelin's owner, CEZ, which is majority-owned by the state.
Human Rights Minister Says Rosatom Should Not continue with Temelin Bid
PRAGUE—Czech ministers for human rights and defense said on Monday that they think the Russian state-run nuclear engineering company Rosatom should be excluded from a $10 billion tender for new reactors following Moscow's occupation of the Crimean peninsula.
"I personally cannot imagine that the Russians would continue to participate in the tender to expand Temelin," said Jiri Dienstbier Jr, Minister for Human Rights.
The chief executive of Czech energy group CEZ says his company may be forced to pull out of building costly new nuclear reactors at Temelin power plant if the new government says it is not open to providing price guarantees on Temelin power generated by the new units.
The new Czech government’s threat to abandon a tender for the $15bn project would leave CEZ AS and the bidders to build the nuclear reactors with large losses.
A Russian-Czech group led by Rosatom has invested heavily in the tender for two new reactors at the Temelin announced in 2009, while rival bidder Westinghouse Electric LLC also said it’s incurred “very significant costs”.
The Czech Republic’s ambition to secure its future energy independence with a $15 billion nuclear expansion will be thwarted unless the state guarantees a price for the power, the country’s largest electricity producer said.
“We won’t build without state guarantees,” Pavel Cyrani, chief of strategy at Prague-based CEZ AS, said in an interview in the city. “It’s simply impossible.”
CEZ, like other power producers in Europe, has seen profit margins squeezed after economic stagnation cut demand, dragging down prices. The utility has delayed choosing a supplier of two new reactors for its Temelin plant pending assurances from the government that the project will make money. The state, CEZ’s main shareholder, is counting on the expansion to counter a loss in capacity as ageing plants are retired over the next 15 years.
BUDAPEST, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary want the European Union to support nuclear energy projects and not to over-regulate the area, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Monday after a summit of the "Visegrad Four" countries.
The four also threw their backing behind shale gas extraction in Europe, and agreed to set up a natural gas market forum with the aim of fostering a regional gas market, which will convene in Budapest this month, Orban said.
PRAGUE, Sept 25 (Reuters) - CEZ is taking a wait-and-see approach to new investment as low power prices pressure energy companies and will scale back renewable plans due to an uncertain regulatory landscape, the Czech utility's chief strategy officer said.
Pavel Cyrani, also a CEZ board member, told the Reuters Eastern Europe Investment summit on Wednesday that a cautious approach was necessary to allow central Europe's biggest utility to remain healthy in current tough market conditions.
