In a letter to the Bulgarian Energy holding, the German company RWE today announced its withdrawal from the controversial Belene nuclear power plant (NPP) in northern Bulgaria. RWE cites doubts about the project's profitability as the major reason for the company's retreat.

"For the past 18 months, we've been pointing out to RWE that Belene is a high-risk project in terms of safety, economics, environment and corruption," says Heffa Schücking from the German environment NGO Urgewald. "It sure took the company a long time to face up to the facts," she comments. RWE's decision comes in the wake of a broad grass-roots campaign of German environment organizations against RWE's investment plans in Belene. Some 30,000 German citizens sent letters and petitions to RWE's CEO asking…read more

Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mundiale (Italy), Friends of the Earth (France), Netwerk Vlaanderen (Belgium), Platform (UK), SETEM (Spain) and Urgewald (Germany) expose investments in harmful practices and companies of thirteen large European banks in this new…read more

Today, the Financial Times and IFC, a member of the World Bank group, will announce the winners of the 2009 FT Sustainable Banking Awards. This year, Deutsche Bank is on the five bank shortlist for the category „Sustainable Bank of the Year".

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