Sustainable Energy Law Notebook

On 22-23 January we co-organised the  29th European Energy Law Seminar (EELS) in The Hague (NL). I had the pleasure of presenting my views on "The French regime for hydropower concessions under EU scrutiny. Opening up to competition … or not." as part of the comparative session reviewing regimes in Norway, Italy, Portugal and France.     The proceedings from the conference will be published in the XIIIth edition of the European Energy Law Report at Intersentia . The XIth edition is currently available for purchase: http://intersentia.com/en/shop/academisch/european-energy-law-report-xi.html     More about the EELS :  http://www.jus.uio.no/nifs/english/research/events/2018/01-22-eels-den-haague.html http://www.never.nl/site/index.php/eels   The seminar is a collaboration between the Dutch Energy Law Association, the Center of Energy Law of the University of Groningen and the Scandinavian Instit...

  The Oslo District Court has today, 4 January 2018 , delivered its judgment in the case concerning the validity of decision awarding oil and gas production licenses in the Arctic waters of Norway, in the Barents Sea .   What is the case about   The case is about the validity of the decision taken by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and validated by the King in Council on 10 June 2016, to award petroleum production licenses as part of the 23rd licensing round in an area close to the ice edge in the South East of the Barents Sea. This happened after that the ice edge line was moved further North and the opening of new areas int eh Barent Sea in 2013 in that region.   The plantiffs are two environmental organisations, GreenPeace Norway and Natur and Ungdom, who submitted that the decission was illegal on two grounds:   the new provision of §112 of the Norwegian Constitution (environment provision) was breached; the ...