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The Environment Committee of the European Parliament (EP) has made a new proposal to accelerate the market uptake of electric and low emission vehicles and has proposed a higher target (35%) than the European Commission (30%) for new buses and lorries to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030 with an intermediate target of 20% by 2025. The Parliament will vote on the committee’s recommended draft by mid-November 2018.

Urban buses have been added to the scope of the proposal and the Environment Committee MEPs proposed that 50% of new buses should be electric from 2025 onwards and 75% should be electric by 2030. Besides, manufacturers would have to make sure that low- and zero-emission vehicles (which emit at least 50% less than the average) account for 5% of the sales of new cars and vans by 2025, and 20% in 2030.

In September 2018, the European Parliament adopted a draft law that proposed setting a higher target for reducing EU fleet-wide emissions for new cars (excluding lorries and buses) by 20% by 2025 and by 40% by 2030. Once again, this objective is much higher than the previous objective of 30% set by the European Commission (EC).

US power utility FirstEnergy has changed plans for the 1,300 MW coal-fired Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island, West Virginia (United States) and will keep it in operation until 1 June 2022, after having earlier announced that the plant would be sold or deactivated in January 2019.

The German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur or BNetzA) has unveiled the results of two separate auctions, one for onshore wind energy and the other one for solar photovoltaic (PV), both with a bidding date set for 1 October 2018. These results confirm the trend observed during the first wind-solar mixed tender in the country (April 2018),….

The Ukrainian government has decided to raise domestic residential gas prices by 23.5% starting from the beginning of November 2018 in a move to qualify for more financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Chinese privately-owned gas distribution company ENN Energy has begun commercial operations at the 3 Mt/year Zhoushan LNG import and regasification terminal in Zhejiang province (China) after several months of trial operations. The construction started in early 2016 and the project was commissioned in August 2018,…

State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) and the Turkish government have inaugurated the US$6.3bn (€5.5bn) Aegean refinery project (STAR) in İzmir’s Aliağa district (Turkey)..The first shipment of crude oil has arrived from Azerbaijan and the 10 Mt//ear (200,000 bbl//) facility is expected to start production at the end of October 2018.

The Irish Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) has given its support to the 500 MW Greenlink high voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnection project between Ireland and Wales (United Kingdom). The government estimates that the project is in the public interest and the CRU announced that it should be backed with a new regulatory regime,…

French power company EDF has announced a third round of public consultation for the Sizewell C nuclear reactor project in Suffolk (United Kingdom). The consultation is slated to begin in January 2019 and EDF hopes to submit a planning application for the reactor in 2020 and start construction at the end of 2021.