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The German Ministry for Economy and Energy has published its legislative strategy to phase-out coal, to implement the recommendations of the "Growth, structural change and employment" Commission, namely reducing coal-fired capacity to 30 GW in 2022 (including 15 GW of lignite-fired power plants) and to 17 GW in 2030 (9 GW lignite), to reach zero coal-fired capacity in 2038. Germany currently operates around 41 GW of coal-fired power capacity that supplied more than a third of the country’s power generation in 2018.

In May 2019, the Federal government approved the key points of the structural funding programme for coal mining regions, making available a €40bn financial support for the regions affected by the coal exit by 2038. The Ministry is now working on a draft bill, which will be soon submitted to the government and the coal phase-out law should be adopted by the end of the year.

According to the draft, Germany will organise tenders for coal closure compensation payments: the operators of coal-fired power plants will bid a price for the closure of their plant and those offering the lowest cost per CO2 emission will be awarded compensation.

SP Energy Networks (SPEN), the power network subsidiary of ScottishPower (part of the Iberdrola group), has submitted its Draft Transmission Business Plan to the British energy regulator OFGEM’s RIIO-2 Challenge Group. SPEN plans to invest around £1.4bn (nearly €1.6bn) between 2021 and 2026.

Royal Dutch Shell has started to sell electricity to businesses on the Japanese retail power market, benefiting from the increasing liberalisation of the Japanese electricity market. Shell registered as a retail electricity seller in November 2018 and is procuring electricity on the wholesale market.

Iran and Armenia have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to expand their economic cooperation, especially in energy matters. The two countries plan to complete the construction of a third power interconnection by 2020, to boost Iranian power exports to Armenia to more than 1,000 MW.

The Egyptian government has introduced new energy subsidy cuts, increasing fuels and cooking gas prices by 18% to 30%: the price of 92 octane gasoline rose by around 18%, from EGP 6.75/l (US$40.6c/l) to EGP 8/l (US$48.1c/l), while that of 80 octane and diesel rose by nearly 23% from EGP 5.5/l (US$33.1c/l) to EGP 6.75/l (US$40.6c/l).

The British Planning Inspectorate has accepted Vattenfall’s planning application for the 1,800 MW Norfolk Boreas offshore wind project and plans to issue a final decision on the project by early December 2019. The project would be developed of the Norfolk coast (England). It would consist of at least 90 turbines and would be connected to the British grid at Happisburgh.

South Korea’s state-owned Export-Import Bank of Korea has agreed to lend US$1.5bn to the Indonesian oil and gas company Pertamina to support its downstream projects, including the plans known as the Refinery Development Masterplan Project Program (RDMP) and the New Grass Root Refinery (NGRR). ….

China has started to build the middle part of a gas pipeline connecting the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to Blagoveshchensk at the Russian border. A 1,110 km gas pipeline section is now under construction between Changling in the northeastern province of Jilin and Yongqing in the Hebei province and is expected to be completed by October 2020.