The technology of cold ironing (or shore-to-ship power) can meaningfully reduce greenhouse gases and air pollutant emissions from ships at the berth by powering the vessels from the electrical shore grid. While cold ironing constitutes an effective and affordable solution in northern Europe and America, economic, legal, and environmental factors still render this technology less attractive in southern Europe. This paper aims to unpack and analyze the economic, regulatory, and environmental factors that can foster cold ironing as a standard installation in the Mediterranean Sea. Based on a model design for the port of Trieste (Italy) as applied to a cluster of target ports in the Adriatic Sea (in Italy, Croatia, and Greece), this article evaluates the cold ironing payback period by comparing costs of shore side-plants with environmental externalities and O&M costs. Moreover, the paper addresses key regulatory bottlenecks arising in different European jurisdictions with regard to the setting-up and development of cold ironing, while appraising the legal and economic consequences of deploying cold ironing in light of the future inclusion of the maritime sector in the EU Emission Trading System.

Net metering is a support scheme for the promotion of renewable energy sources (RES) that is linked with state-of-the-art trends, especially in the field of electricity, such as distributed generation, self-consumption and energy communities. Whilst the European Union (EU) Clean Energy Package has established a more coherent and comprehensive regime for RES support schemes in general, it makes no explicit reference to net metering schemes. This raises questions as to how and under which terms net metering schemes are compatible with EU law. Against this background, this article aims to analyse the relevant EU law provisions and conduct a comparative analysis of net metering regimes in four Member States to demonstrate that the national schemes enacted and applied have significantly different design features. The article argues that a more coordinated and specific approach on net metering at the EU level should emerge.

Soil contamination represents a major global environmental threat. Only in the European Union, around 340.000 contaminated sites are inventoried. At the same time, the need to foster the uptake of sustainable biofuels to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector is one of the pillars of the EU’s climate action to achieve the overarching goals set under the European Climate Law and the Renewable Energy Directive. Against this backdrop, nature-based solutions for soil remediation are increasingly being advocated as sustainable options to enhance soil biodiversity while addressing soil contamination in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and, in the EU, the European Green Deal and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. Among several nature-based soil remediation techniques, phytoremediation consists of the use of plants and their associated microbes to stabilise, degrade, volatilise and extract soil pollutants. Furthermore, the non-food biomass generated as a result of phytoremediation could provide a meaningful low Indirect Land Use Change (iluc) feedstock for the production of advanced biofuels to reduce climate change. This paper addresses the policy and legal background surrounding the uptake of phytoremediation and recovery of output materials focusing on existing roadblocks currently hampering the full-scale adoption of such a complex yet inherently circular value chain. The paper concludes that meaningful steps must yet be taken to properly embed nature-based soil remediation techniques, such as phytoremediation, in the current legal framework and to ensure social ownership of the same to maximise its environmental benefits.

This contribution aims to provide an in-depth outlook of the phase-out of coal-fired energy generation in Italy. In particular, this article analyzes the state-of-the-art with regard to both the current role of coal generation and the performance of the main legal and regulatory tools as implemented in Italy thus far to ensure the closure of all coal power plants by 2025 as announced in the Italian National Climate and Energy Plan. Based on existing data and scenarios on both electricity production and demand trends, this article unfolds the marginal role played by coal-fired generation in the Italian energy mix. In addition, this paper aims to highlight the outstanding technical uncertainties and regulatory hurdles in the way towards de-carbonization of energy generation in Italy. This paper argues that several remarkable improvements are needed in order to avoid over-generation (especially through natural gas), to upscale the penetration of renewable energy sources, and develop the necessary infrastructures to adequately deliver on the full phasing-out of coal within the expected timeframes.