Recently in Environmental Law Category

The controversial dash for shale gas looks set to take an interesting turn in the next few weeks and months, with two major legislative announcements likely to be announced that will change the landscape of energy provision in the UK.

The Government is widely expected to announce it will remove its ban on the 'fracking' technique used to extract shale gas from the earth next week.

However, the excitement that that announcement will generate will be somewhat tempered by news coming out of Brussels that the EU intends to legislate to control the production of shale gas, amid fears that fracking could cause earthquakes.

A new £1bn power station at Pembroke in Wales may be forced to have a new cooling system added after it emerged that its existing design may flout environmental laws, reports BBC Wales.

BBC Wales has seen a leaked document produced by the European Commission that formally notifies the UK Government that it has infringed four separate environmental laws on at least 18 occasions.

However, the plant's developers, RWE nPower say that the design and build of the station has been thoroughly scrutinised by regulators.

The Government has committed something of a U-turn on climate change after UK Energy Minister Charles Hendry last week announced that the Government will scrap 85 environmental regulations in a move which could save UK businesses some £400m in the next 20 years.

In addition to scrapping 85 regulations, Mr Hendry announced that the Government will reform 48 others as part of the UK Government's 'red tape challenge'.

The 'red tape challenge' was laid out by the Coalition Government and the cabinet office in 2010. The aim of the challenge is to reduce the level of bureaucracy which affects businesses and the public.

Surfers in Devon and Cornwall have written to the UK Government to ask them for a change in the law to try to protect British beaches and surfing waves.

Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), a surfer's action group which campaigns for clean beaches and to protect the coastline, believes that the surfing industry in Devon and Cornwall is at risk from coastal developments and pollution.

The surfing industry brings around £65m in tourism business to the South West region and it is this which the group fears is threatened by the pace of coastal development.