On August 9, 2019, energy system accident occurred in the UK, which cut off electricity supply to about one million consumers and caused major transport problems, especially in the rail industry. The weaknesses in the efficiency of the backup energy supply of certain critical infrastructure objects, such as hospitals, subway, as well as technical shortcomings in the electric traction of the locomotive passenger transportation fleet were identified.
The Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2019, an international professional conference, organized by the German government (federal ministries of economy, energy, and foreign affairs) which was held in Berlin on April 9-10, 2019, jointly with the Bundestag profile committee, announced the acceleration of the development of electricity transmission grids.
On May 14, 2019, the operator of the future Gas Interconnector “Greece-Bulgaria” (ICGB) – the international company “ICGB AD” announced the completion of a tender for the construction of a 182 km gas pipeline between Greece and Bulgaria with the capacity of 3 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
On April 2, 2019, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) representative, Michael Mobilia, said that during March 2019, when prices for liquefied gas in China and other Asian markets fell to a historically low level, the countries of the European Union became the main export market for American LNG.
On April 1, 2019, a regular meeting of the Central and South Eastern Europe Energy Connectivity (CESEC) was held in Bucharest, Romania. Consequently, the CESEC decision has become one of the important steps towards the creation of a regional electricity market in Central and Southeast Europe. The group has confirmed its ability to facilitate the implementation of energy projects through grant support from the “Connecting Europe Facility” program.
On January 25, 2019, the so-called “coal compromise” was reached in Germany between representatives of government institutions, political forces, business and non-governmental organizations. It became a precedent of an integrated approach in addressing complex political, economic and social issues surrounding the closure of the coal industry in Germany, as a result of commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement and the requirements of European legislation for reducing CO2 emissions.
Scandinavian trading platform, the Nord Pool, is divided into a company that combines electric power markets and a company-operator of the electricity exchange. This is done in order to increase its own competitive advantage and avoid conflicts of interest. The company’s management believes that in the coming years such a process will take place on all European exchanges of electric power industry.
On January 14th, 2019, Sweden started registering the owners of the hydroelectricity facilities to implement a comprehensive assessment of the impact of this sector on the environment and ensure the preconditions for the implementation of the provisions of the new law on water resources and hydropower.
Due to the competitiveness of Russian coal, further growth of exports of coal from Russia is possible, mainly in view of increased supplies to China, India and South Korea. The Russian coal industry demonstrates resistance to the regime of international sanctions and continues to increase its exports of coal. The total annual revenues of enterprises in the industry are estimated at 14 billion USD. The main deterrent of its intensive development is the technological gap of the industry, lack of capacity of the railway and port infrastructure, and lack of investments in the development of industry.
