Legal challenge against lignite power plant Ptolemaida 5

The Green Tank and ClientEarth, an organization of environment lawyers, filed today an appeal against the environmental permit of the new, under construction ignite power plant “Ptolemaida 5”.

The two organizations had previously requested (December 2019) from the Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy to amend the environmental permit of the new plant ensuring that it will comply with the new, stricter Emission Limit Values (ELV). These are imposed by the EU environmental legislation (Industrial Emissions Directive) and, in particular, the new Best Available Techniques conclusions (BATc), which came into force in August 2017.

Since the Ministry did not reply to the request for an administrative review, the two organizations had no other legal means to urge for the implementation of the EU environmental registration but to file an appeal to the Council of State.