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    Almut Bonhage

    Study on Existing and Future EU Water Legislation

    549 777 Almut Bonhage

    Upon request of MEPs, members of the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services has drawn a paper on the Cost of Non-Europe in Water Legislation. Their assessment builds on expert research commissioned specifically for the purpose and provided by Triple E consulting – Energy, Environment & Economics B.V.

    The overall objective of the expert study was to carry out a combination of a backward looking (ex-post) and forward looking (ex-ante) evaluation of European water legislation. The emphasis is on the ex-post aspect, mainly because of the need to check the level of implementation of existing legislation. The ex-ante aspect aims at assessing the potential costs and benefits of further intervention at EU levelusing five case studies, along the lines of the approach adopted for other sectors and reported in the ‘Mapping the Cost of Non-Europe, 2014 -19’ report.

    Contract details:
    Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services, Directorate C-Impact Assessment and European Added Value

    Presented by:
    Triple E Consulting –Energy, Environment & Economics

    Authors:
    Rob Williams
    Stefan Scheuer (Stefan Scheuer Consulting)
    Oscar Widerberg
    Lisa Eichler
    Mariya Gancheva

    Download: Study on Existing and Future EU Water Legislation

    Download: EP report – The Cost of Non-Europe in Water Legislation

    toolkit complaint

    Guide: Your Complaints For Strong Implementation of the Energy Efficiency Directive

    619 663 Almut Bonhage
    toolkit complaint

    This practical guide for complaints encourages stakeholders, both at national and EU level, to make best use of complaints to the European Commission in order to tackle poor or lacking implementation of the Energy Efficiency Directive.

    Frances Bean, 2014, Your Complaints For Strong Implementation of the Energy Efficiency Directive. A guide funded by the European Climate Foundation.

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    EU EED: Guidebook for Strong Implementation

    235 300 Almut Bonhage

    The European Union has three climate and energy targets to be reached before 2020: a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 20% of energy derived from renewables and a 20% increase in energy efficiency. If these 2020 targets are not met, a sustainable, secure and affordable energy system will be exceedingly difficult and expensive to achieve.

    The Coalition believes that the quality of implementation of other directives has been relatively poor. MSs often transpose EU directives with a view to meeting only the minimum levels of ambition, avoiding complexity or changes to existing national law, even though going beyond minimum requirements can often bring numerous economic advantages and other types of benefits. All actors within the value chains of the sectors covered in the EED, be it industry, buildings, appliances, transport or energy supply, have a vested interest in supporting good implementation. MSs have made a political commitment to the 2020 targets and the Coalition will work to help them follow through on that commitment. The Coalition wants to stress that this guidebook is part of a long-term endeavour, rather than a one-off attempt that will end with its publication.

    This guidebook is intended for members of the Coalition and other national, regional and local implementers and stakeholders of the EED, including industry, manufacturers, utility companies and non-profit organisations.

    Editor responsible:
    Stefan Scheuer

    Contributing authors and organisations:
    Andoni Hidalgo (Eurima)
    Andrea Marandino (E3G)
    Arnaud Duvielguerbigny (COGEN Europe)
    Brook Riley (Friends of the Earth)
    Dan Staniaszek (BPIE)
    Dora Petroula (Climate Action Network Europe)
    Eoin Lees (Regulatory Assistance Project)
    Erica Hope (European Climate Foundation)
    EuroACE
    Fran McCrae (Stefan Scheuer Consulting)
    Ingrid Holmes (E3G)
    Katarzyna Wardal (European Federation of Intelligent Energy Efficiency Services)
    Marta Toporek (Client Earth)
    Matthieu Ballu (Stefan Scheuer Consulting)
    Randall Bowie (eceee)
    Renée Bruel (European Climate Foundation)
    WWF European Policy Office

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    Energy efficency: How effective are public suport schemes?

    514 733 Almut Bonhage
    Ademe study

    Study for ADEME on public financing of energy efficiency programmes

    515 593 Almut Bonhage
    Ademe study

    The French Environment & Energy Management Agency ADEME commissioned Stefan Scheuer SPRL to provide a survey of public budgets committed by different Member States through grant schemes, loans or tax measures to support energy efficiency investments in buildings.

    Matthieu Ballu, Paolo Di Stefano, 2012. Efficacité des soutiens publics aux investissements d’efficacité énergétique dans l’Union européenne. A study for ADEME (in French).

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    Energy Savings 2020

    Energy Savings 2020: How to triple the impact of energy saving policies in Europe

    409 577 Almut Bonhage

    The European Union committed itself in 2009 to the reduction of its Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by between 80 and 95% by 2050. The European Climate Foundation (ECF) has commissioned a series of reports from various sector experts to quantify that goal, assess how it can be achieved and what its impacts might be.

    Energy Savings 2020 is the latest report in the series. The role of this report is to assess the impact of current EU energy and climate policies and to make recommendations on the design of an overarching energy saving policy framework to achieve Europe’s 20% energy savings target by 2020 as a vital step to meet its 2050 GHG commitment.

    The report was commissioned by the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP).
    Stefan Scheuer was advisor to ECF in this project.

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    10 years of the Water Framework Directive: A Toothless Tiger?

    453 640 Almut Bonhage

    The adoption of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) in 2000 was a major landmark establishing new requirements for integrated river basin planning in order to achieve ecological objectives. Ten years of planning and consultation across Europe went into River Basin Management Plans (RBMP), which were meant to be the main vehicles for realising the new water management regime by setting the environmental objectives.

    With this fifth snapshot the EEB and its Members have investigated RBMPs across Europe to get a quantitative comparison of environmental ambitions, focussing on nutrient pollution.

    This snapshot established serious doubts over the effectiveness of the WFD implementation to change specific and wellknown unsustainable water management practices. Robust nutrient pollution parameters and targeted measures, as they should be used to define and achieve the good ecological status under the ‘one out – all out’ principle, are unnecessarily drowning in complexity and ignorance. These issues have to be addressed in a general and longer-term perspective in the Commission’s 2012 review of the WFD implementation as part of the ‘Blueprint to safeguard EU water’ (EC 2010).

    Paper researched and written by Stefan Scheuer (Stefan Scheuer S.P.R.L.) and Joeri Naus (EEB stagaire)

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    Heads in the sand over Europe’s most dangerous chemicals

    554 784 Almut Bonhage

    Many chemicals can cause irreversible damage to humans and animals. Emissions of such hazardous chemicals have to be phased out and their uses should be substituted with safer alternatives according to EU water and chemical legislation.

    Greenpeace investigated progress with phasing out emissions of the well-known environmental pollutant Nonylphenol in five EU member states, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, Spain and the UK. Nonylphenol, a very hazardous, hormone disrupting chemical which presents particular threats to human and animal fertility, has been identifiedby the EU in 2001 for a emission phase out.

    In 2003, marketing and use of Nonylphenol and Nonylphenol-ethoxylate as such or in preparations in the EU has largely been banned, but its presence in consumer article is still allowed.

    Despite well documented high levels of NP emissions into our aquatic ecosystemand publicly available monitoring data, which show concentrations close to maximum allowed levels, authorities ignore legal requirements to act.

    Written and edited by Stefan Scheuer, Advisor to Greenpeace

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    Europe’s water at the crossroads

    694 692 Almut Bonhage

    The European Environmental Bureau and WWF launch benchmarks for Europe’s water policy: Europe’s water at the crossroads. Five headline indicators are presented to measure progress in the ongoing water management reforms under the EU Water Framework Directive. The indicators look at issues like transparency and public onwership of river basin management, provision of more space and water to enhance aquatic ecosystems and making them more resilient to climate change.

    Scheuer, S. (2008). Europe’s water at the crossroads. Brussels: EEB and WWF.

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    A Fresh Perspective for Managing Water in California

    563 723 Almut Bonhage

    Throughout the world there is increasing public awareness of the importance of sustainable water management to meet both growing human demands and ecosystem needs. Predictions of increased climate variability and indicators of ecological and water quality deterioration have made water management a salient political issue, particularly in arid climate regions such as western North America and the Iberian Peninsula. In recent years, substantial effort has been focused on adopting sustainable water use practices and mitigating the impacts to natural rivers and streams resulting from human activities. Yet the restoration of natural biological communities has been more difficult than anticipated. Our inability to effectively restore and protect rivers and groundwater sources are in part due to the scale of environmental damage inflicted upon them, but also are a consequence of the legal and institutional frameworks under which water is managed. Assessments of the current state of the world’s water resources suggest that conventional approaches to water management will be inadequate to sustainably balance human and ecosystem needs into the future. Furthermore, as nations around the world struggle with water management challenges, there has been little explicit attempt for one region to learn from the experience of another in approaching common problems.

    The European Union’s Water Framework Directive (WFD) defines a new strategy for meeting human water demands while protecting environmental functions and values and may be helpful in informing water management practices and policies in other regions of the world. In the report we explore how the management approach described under the WFD compares to the legal and institutional system of a California river basin, managed under distinctly different principles and objectives. Through a theoretical application of the WFD, we highlight the critical water management challenges of northern California’s Russian River basin and use the Directive’s approach to develop strategic recommendations for water management reform.

    A Fresh Perspective for Managing Water in California:Insights from Applying the European Water Framework Directive to the Russian River
    Ted Grantham, Juliet Christian-Smith, G. Matt Kondolf, and Stefan Scheuer
    University of California, Water Resources Center Contribution #208
    ISBN-13: 978-0-9788896-2-3; ISBN-10: 0-9788896-2-2
    March 2008

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