Laura Otýpková
Lawyer and Head of the Responsible Energy Team
In December Frank Bold team co-organised a meeting of NGOs and representatives of the Member States of the European Union. The all-day meeting in Brussels was prepared in cooperation with our colleagues from European Environmental Bureau and Client Earth.
Our lawyer Laura Otýpková discussed the possible ways of improvement of the culture of regulating industrial activities with experts from Sweden, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. This topic is very relevant because of the ongoing industrial emissions directive review process which is being carried out by the European Commission.
We shared our insight into the topics of setting of conditions in integrated permits, derogations from emission limits or public participation and access to information with the experts. We discussed also the good practice, which was presented by the representatives of European member states.
The threatened loss of drinking water for tens of thousands of people in the Czech Republic’s Liberec region has earned the notice of Politico, a Brussels-based news site. Politico reported on the plans for the expansion of the Turów brown coal mine in Poland, near the Czech/German/Polish border.
Thirty thousand people in the Czech Republic’s Liberec region face a loss of access to drinking water due to the planned expansion of the Turów coal mine. This mine is planned to newly stretch outwards to just 150 meters from the Czech border and downwards to a depth below the bottom of the Baltic. The resulting drainage of Czech underground water is not just a threat to citizens; the drying out of the area would destroy entire local ecosystems and cause significant agricultural damage. A further increase to dust and noise levels is a threat as well. Furthermore, the end date for mining is to be delayed from 2020 out to 2044.
What would happen to Czech power grid in 2030 if all coal power plants were shut down? Even without coal-fired generation it is possible to ensure stable electricity supply in the Czech Republic, proves a study which we publicly presented in May 2018. Now we introduce new additional scenarios to the study, again analysed by Energynautics.
