Environmental group sues for Nord Stream 2 cancellation

German environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) has amended a lawsuit filed last year against Russian state-controlled Gazprom's 55bn m³/yr Nord Stream 2 project to seek a permanent construction freeze that would cancel the project.

The group filed a lawsuit in July with the Greifswald higher administrative court. The lawsuit requested a review of the pipeline's building and operating permit issued by the Stralsund mining authority to account for a broader view of related methane emissions.

But a recent constitutional court decision has prompted DUH to request a permanent cancellation.

Germany's federal constitutional court in late April struck down parts of the country's federal climate protection act for backloading emissions reductions into periods after 2030. This would have allowed Germany to expend in the coming years most of the carbon budget it will need to stick to in order to hit its emissions reduction targets. The court also ordered the legislature to set clear provisions for reduction targets from 2031 onward by the end of 2022.

Nord Stream 2 would be responsible for emissions of 100mn t of CO2/yr, making it incompatible with Germany's emissions targets and its carbon budget approach, which the federal court determined must be proportionally distributed between existing and future generations, DUH said. The Stralsund mining authority had not reviewed Nord Stream 2's effect on climate targets and the CO2 budget in its approval process, the group said.

DUH and fellow environmental group Naturschutzbund Deutschland (Nabu) also filed a lawsuit with the Hamburg administrative court challenging amendments to the pipeline's construction permit that would have allowed works on the gas line in German waters before June.

The Hamburg lawsuit has suspended the changes to the permit, blocking pipelaying until the end of May. But pipelaying is ongoing along Nord Stream 2's two parallel lines in Danish waters.

By Jacob Mandel