The energy sector in Croatia

Croatia has around four million inhabitants and rich potential for renewable energy and energy efficiency.  In 2022 the country imported 60 per cent of its total primary energy supply, close to an EU average of 62 per cent. Croatia produces oil and gas but unlike most of its Western Balkan neighbours, it no longer has its own coal reserves. 

Croatia is somewhat dependent on electricity imports, depending on hydrological conditions. However this is partly due to the fact that the Krsko nuclear power plant in Slovenia, of which HEP owns 50 percent, also contributes to Croatia’s electricity supply but is counted under imports in the statistics. 

Most of Croatia’s electricity generation capacity is owned by Hrvatska Elektroprivreda, the state-owned electricity group, though with an increasing number of privately-owned renewables facilities – primarily wind farms.  

In 2021, 31 per cent of Croatia’s total electricity came from hydropower, 16 per cent from gas, seven per cent from coal, 11 per cent from wind, six per cent from biomass and less than one per cent each for solar, geothermal and oil. If we assume that Croatia was able to utilise half of Krško’s 2021 output, then this made up 15 per cent of its total electricity consumption, with a further six per cent coming from additional imports. 

Although Croatia has made some progress in using its wind potential, solar and solar thermal are underused compared to the obvious potential in this very sunny country.  ry.

Renewables development was for years held back by low feed-in tariff quotas for solar. In line with EU State aid rules, Croatia has now switched to auctioning and feed-in premiums rather than feed-in tariffs, but delays in adopting the implementing legislation and adopting new energy and climate strategies created uncertainty for several years and slowed both wind and solar development. 

Much time and resources have also been lost on pushing outdated projects such as the 500 MW Plomin C coal power plant, to be run on imported coal, the 450 MW Peruća gas power plant, and large-scale hydropower projects in sensitive locations such as Ombla and Kosinj. The first three have now been cancelled after civil society campaigns highlighted their weaknesses, while HEP is persisting with the latter. A highly unpopular and weakly justified floating LNG terminal on the island of Krk, with financial support from the EU, also started operating in early 2021. 

In November 2021 at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Croatia’s Prime Minister announced a coal phase-out date of 2033 at the latest. In reality, it is likely to happen much earlier. Croatia only has one remaining coal plant, the 210 MW Plomin 2, which runs on imported coal, and with carbon prices expected to keep rising in the coming years, it is highly unlikely that it will remain economic to operate it until 2033.    

Croatia still has plenty of potential for energy efficiency improvements, especially in the residential sector, though it has made some progress. As of 2022, its energy intensity, was still nearly 1.5 times the EU-28 average.  

For a more in-depth look at barriers to a sustainable energy transition in Croatia and our proposals for how to overcome them, see our 2021 study with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung: The Political Economy of Energy Transition in Southeast Europe – Barriers and Obstacles.