Sustainable Energy Law Notebook

Just published! Book chapter on: C. Banet, "Techno-nationalism in the Context of Energy Transition: Regulating Technology Innovation Transfer in Offshore Wind Technologies." Summary: In the context of economic recovery and energy transition, techno-nationalist measures within clean energy technologies have been flourishing for the past decade. These measures may find justification grounds in local development needs and environmental concerns, but, as this chapter demonstrates, the margin of appreciation left to WTO parties is very limited. Such measures will rarely pass the test of the different WTO Agreements to qualify for an exception. On the other hand, the pressing need to access clean energy technologies has resulted in several multilateral initiatives inspired by a more techno-globalist thinking under the WTO and UNFCCC regimes. This Chapter reviews these initiatives and takes offshore wind technologies as case study, as it is one of t...

Economic resilience to better serve energy markets and tackle climate change   In the aftermaths of a financial and budgetary crisis, faced with a slow economic recovery and forced to respond quickly to geopolitical and natural resources challenges of global character, the representatives from governments and central banks of the Group of the Twenty major economies (so-called G20 ) decided to put "resilience" at the heart of their action during their last meeting in Australia, 15-16 November 2014 .  " Strengthening the resilience of the global economy and stability of the financial system are crucial to sustaining growth and development ." (para. 12)  " Strong and resilient energy markets are critical to economic growth. " (para. 17) We should better get used to the concept of resilience , because it is now used extensively, lately by the newly appointed European Commission ( " resilient energy union with a forward-looking climate ch...

On 30 April 2014, the World Trade Organization (WTO) received a request for consultations from the Russian Federation against the European Union and its legislation regarding the Third Energy Package and implementing legislation by Member States. See previous post .   The text of the request as submitted by Russia is now available on the WTO website here .

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has now published a press release confirming the request for consultations put forward by Russia before the Organization as regards the EU Third Energy Package (see previous post ).

According to Russian media, the Russian government has decided to sue the European Union over the Third Energy Package before the World Trade Organization (WTO) .   The news was reported by the press agency ITAR-TASS on 30 April 2014 ( link 1 and link 2 ). According the source, Russia has sent a note to the EU Mission to the WTO after having notified the WTO Secretariat that it wanted to launch the law suit against the EU (normal procedure). More official press releases are not yeat available, neither from the European Commission nor the WTO.

As announced in a previous post , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on 20 April 2012 in reaction to the announcement by Argentina's government to expropriate and nationalise the major stake of the oil company YPF in which the Spanish company Repsol holds a majority share . As the measure is expected to only be the first of several ones, the European Parliament has adopted a broader perspective in its resolution addressing the legal security of European investments outside the European Union . In the resolution (P7_TA-PROV(2012)0143) , provisional version available here , at p.38), the Parliament: REFERS TO the existing legal and political framework (among others): Commission's proposal for a regulation establishing transitional arrangements for bilateral investment agreements between Member States and third countries (grandfathering regulation) (COM(2010)0344); Commission communication of 7 July 2010 entitled "Towards a comprehensive European intern...