Sustainable Energy Law Notebook

On 15 January 2015, the Norwegian government has awarded the first exploitation permit for CO2 injection and storage on the Norwegian Continental Shelf to Equinor. The award follows the announcement made in July 2018 and concerns an area located near the Troill oil and gas Field in the North Sea. Equinor is working together with Shell and Total as part of the Northern Lights Project. They were the only applicants. News release from the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/exploitation-permit-for-co2-storage-on-the-norwegian-continental-shelf/id2625189/  News release from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate: http://www.npd.no/en/news/News/2019/Award-of-exploitation-permit-for-CO2-storage/ 

The European Commission has announced on 7 January 2019 that it intends to prolong the current EU state aid rules for two years, until end of 2022 . Those rules, which were part of the reform on State Aid Modernisation (SAM) , were supposed to expire end of 2020. Other state aid rules have no fixed expiry date. The rules part of the SAM-reform are rules which are typically updated on a regular basis subject to a revision process which, in the present case, is starting this Spring. The whole revision process will advance in several steps . First , the following State aid rules will be prolonged until 2022: General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) De minimis Regulation Guidelines on State aid for environmental protection and energy (EEAG) Guidelines on regional State aid Guidelines on State aid to promote risk Finance Investments Guidelines on State aid for rescuing and restructuring Communication on important Projects of common European interest (IPCEI)