Blog entry

The heroic dust monitor

That the Western Balkans are plagued with toxic air is, unfortunately, common knowledge for anyone living in the region. But in the absence of publicly available air quality data, Bankwatch’s air quality monitor has been able to expose the connection between air pollution and coal throughout the region for the first time – a link that has proved vital in communities’ efforts to loosen the stranglehold of the dirtiest of fossil fuels.

In fact, every major achievement in Bankwatch’s air pollution work has been enabled by our dust monitor. For five years it has been working in the most polluted regions in the Balkans and central Europe, providing us and communities with a huge amount of invaluable data.

So far, the monitor has visited 16 locations, some of them twice. There, it is measuring dust pollution in the ambient air, specifically coarse particles (PM10) and fine particles (PM2.5). The indicative monitoring is done for a period of one month, which is enough to get some preliminary data on the ambient air quality at the location, and by using the meteorological station attached to the monitor, to also get some indication of possible sources.

In all locations, the culprit has been the same – coal. Outdated power plants, ash disposal sites and open-pit coal mines are major sources of air pollution in their regions. These facilities seriously impact the natural environment, quality of life and public health. Local residents see the pollution, smell the burning coal and feel the toll it is taking on their health, but there is not much they can do without data to support their claims.

Authorities provide only limited official air quality data, or none at all. Environmental groups have long been struggling to get more scientific evidence and more updated or real-time air quality data in order to prove the link between coal combustion for energy and air pollution so they can help those communities reduce their exposure.

This is the gap that the dust monitor managed to close in the places it visited. These people have every right to know the condition of the environment they are living in and the right to ask for air pollution to be within the legal and health protective parameters.

By providing just one month of data, the monitor was able to give some of the locals just the right amount of information for them to get some improvements. In Romania, the dust monitor has helped people get the resettlement they had sought for years, to get away from ever-expanding mines; in Hungary it helped bring about the closure of small local coal mines that were polluting remote mountainous villages; in Bosnia and Herzegovina the monitor helped get a better knowledge of the health toll by the old coal power plants. In other cases the monitor has given communities additional ammunition in their efforts to stem construction and expansion of new polluting facilities; and it has motivated IT professionals to start looking for cheaper, long-term ways to track air quality so that local residents can have data available at any time.

This is just a small list of reasons why the dust monitor has become somewhat of a hero for the local communities plagued by coal pollution. Whenever it was direly needed, it was there, travelling thousands of kilometres to help those in need. We returned the favour by keeping it clean, regularly serviced and calibrated, making sure it can continue fighting the good fight.

Contact us!

Contact us if you are an activist, civil society organisation or local community representative from the Balkans interested in monitoring air pollution near you: pollution.monitor@bankwatch.org.

How to ensure public control over projects funded by development banks in non-democratic regimes

Video tutorial in Russian and Uzbek languages is available here.

Hundreds of projects in Uzbekistan have been funded by development banks, with billions of dollars invested in energy, water and sanitation, industry, the financial sector and reforms. Investments at such a scale require scrutiny and public control to ensure they work for the good of people and nature, especially in countries with non-democratic regimes.

CEE Bankwatch Network monitors public finance institutions in Central Asia, and in Uzbekistan in particular. Together with local communities and other NGOs, we expose violations of human rights and social and environmental standards and advocate for the improvement of public investment projects.

For this purpose, we developed a video-tutorial in Russian to inform civil society organisations (CSOs) and activists in Uzbekistan and Central Asia about how they can protect the environment and human rights in the region when they are threatened by development banks. With the support of Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, the video tutorial is also available in Uzbek.

The tutorial covers background information about the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and European Investment Bank (EIB), including the banks’ accountability mechanisms and the social and environmental obligations they need to follow. It also includes information about Bankwatch’s experience with public monitoring of development banks.

The focus is on the mechanisms for the public to influence the decisions of the banks and their clients in terms of information disclosure, stakeholder engagement, environmental and social impact assessment and mitigation, retaliation prevention, compensation for land acquisition, effective remedy, etc.

We explain how public investments work and how the public needs to be involved in the decision-making process to ensure the compliance of the projects and the companies funded by the banks with environmental, social and human rights standards.

This tutorial serves representatives of civil society organisations, civic activists, individuals and communities who have been or may be affected by projects funded by international development banks, as well as journalists covering investment activities in the region.

Estonia barely scratches the surface on green recovery

Public participation in the planning was limited and lacked transparency, and the process suffered from long delays, as we flagged during the preparation of the plan. In addition, the long-awaited 429-page draft of the plan provides disappointingly vague details of the planned measures, leaving too much room for interpretation and thus for environmentally harmful investments. Although the recovery plan is based on the country’s long-term strategy Estonia 2035, the biodiversity sections of the strategy have not been included in the recovery plan. Environmental organisations highlighted this issue during the first round of consultations. Yet, the government chose to take no action, despite the uniquely large fund, the poor state of Estonian ecosystems, the EU’s biodiversity targets, the EU Green Deal and the Estonia 2035 strategy.

Green recovery excludes biodiversity

Estonia’s recovery plan has neglected nature as a part of the green transition. While the plan includes many opportunities to help various industries transition their operations to more environmentally-friendly systems, the very environment these industries have degraded in the past decades has been forgotten. Even though the funds may help reduce the environmental impact of industries in the future, a lot of the damage is already done and should be remedied. In addition to reparations, protecting nature and ecosystems should be at the centre of the green transition due to the sheer basic necessity of irreplaceable ecosystem services and nature’s potential to mitigate and assist in adapting to climate change. Valuing nature is essential for a successful green recovery. Some recovery plan measures which claim to contribute to climate action are potentially harmful to biodiversity – with a holistic view of green transition, this should be impossible. Climate action and biodiversity should not be competing for investments, as they are two sides of the same coin. The contradiction is partly an issue of oversimplification: in mainstream conversation, climate change is often reduced to the amount of CO2 emissions, which dismisses the complexity of the process. While CO2 emissions are indeed a key concern, narrow framing has allowed for the development of nature-harming ‘climate action’ projects, one of the most glaring examples of which is unsustainable forest biomass. This framing has allowed us to disconnect climate goals from biodiversity targets, which is detrimental for the green transition process in the long term.

‘Do no significant harm’ assessment misses out on harmful aspects

The ‘do no significant harm’ assessment that is included in the recovery plan ignores multiple potentially harmful consequences of certain measures. For instance, the assessment for the measure supporting companies’ digital transition identifies only the potential impact of digitalisation on climate goals, but completely ignores whether the measure can be used to promote the efficiency of fossil fuel-related or other environmentally harmful sectors. The measure aiming to support companies’ export competitiveness is a similar case. Its ‘do no significant harm’ assessment is based on an erroneous assumption that Estonia exports almost exclusively information technology (IT) solutions and thus the measure is intended mainly for IT companies. The assessment, however, ignores the fact that shale oil and woody biomass are also major export items in Estonia. [/vc_column_text]

As such, the measure could potentially be used to allow EU funds to boost the production, export and use of fossil fuels or spur further logging, loss of biodiversity and the declining carbon sink in Estonia.

Recovery plan measures could harm biodiversity

One measure which is potentially harmful to biodiversity is the valorisation of bioresources. The key issue is that the description of the measure does not indicate specifically what will be invested in, or flag projects which will not be supported. Although the plan states that the focus is on valorising waste and by-products, which do not increase pressure on ecosystems, valorisation of other types of biomass is not excluded. Thus, the measure in its current form does not prevent harmful investments. For instance, while energy production from biomass is not supported by this measure, energy production from waste or its by-products is supported. This raises many obvious concerns regarding how waste is defined – the forestry industry and environmental organisations have very differing understandings – and how the process is monitored to ensure that only waste is used. In addition, the measure claims to promote the sustainable use of bioresources while not explaining what is deemed sustainable. The description of the measure refers to no limits, maximum quantities or potential safeguards (barring references to EU directives) to actually deliver the ‘sustainable use’ promise. It is a common misconception that valorisation or other forms of efficiency improvement naturally reduce the use of the resource, when in fact growing demand may increase the overall quantities needed in order to make the most profit. In the context of continuously increasing pressure on bioresources, setting limits is crucial for preventing further ecosystem degradation. Another measure which indirectly threatens biodiversity is the Ülemiste multi-modal transport terminal. While promoting sustainable mobility via building a multi-modal terminal is positive from a climate perspective, the terminal is part of the Rail Baltic railway project. According to the current plans, however, building the new railway will likely negatively affect ecosystems in Natura 2000 areas due to the chosen railway route. In the ‘do no significant harm’ analysis, this connection was not taken into account.

European Commission flags unlawful logging in Natura 2000 areas

Early this June, the European Commission opened an infringement procedure concerning logging activities in Natura 2000 sites in Estonia. The procedure claims that Estonian national law is not aligned with the EU Habitats Directive and Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive, after the Commission identified 217 sets of site-specific protection rules which were adopted without the required environmental assessment. This infringement procedure validates many concerns voiced by Estonian environmental NGOs in previous years regarding loosened logging regulations, including in protected areas. The infringement procedure further emphasises that Estonian nature protection has serious systemic issues, which have affected even those areas that should be most protected. The recovery fund was an opportunity to remedy them.

Current battles over nature protection and the unwillingness to use the recovery fund to invest in biodiversity illustrate the state’s constant prioritisation of economic gain over functioning ecosystems.

Although Estonia’s recovery plan sets out multiple positive measures, it lacks a holistic vision of a green recovery, scratching the surface with a natureless green recovery, providing vague details of measures, and allowing funding for harmful measures. Good intentions do not automatically lead to good outcomes – while the recovery plan was not created with a malicious intent to fuel ecosystem-destroying industries, it also does not prevent the funds from being used for these purposes.

Civil society wishes on the EBRD’s 30th birthday: shut the fossil fuels party

As the EBRD marks its 30th anniversary, right after the hottest decade on record, over 60 civil society organizations — including CEE Bankwatch Network, 350.org, and Oil Change International — are calling on the Bank to end financing to the fossil fuels industry.

In a letter sent to members of the EBRD’s board of directors ahead of the Bank’s annual general meeting this week, the NGOs urged the Bank to step up its role in the decarbonisation process in its countries of operation. Some of these countries — such as Uzbekistan and Cyprus — are home to economies that are heavily reliant on fossil fuels for their energy production and are simultaneously some of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis.

Though the Bank phased out direct investments in coal in 2018, it is still supporting gas, portraying it as a transitional fuel. In reality, instead of facilitating the energy transition, the EBRD’s lending does more to help cement countries’ reliance on fossil fuels. According to Bankwatch’s study, the EBRD has invested more than EUR 3.5 billion in the last two years in energy projects, with fossil fuels projects making 43 per cent of the Bank’s energy portfolio.

In early June, the EBRD published for public comments a draft methodology for aligning its lending with the Paris Agreement. Yet, this document is not nearly as robust or ambitious as it should have been.

For instance, the proposed ‘non-aligned list,’ which would include projects inegligible for EBRD financing, is even laxer than the Bank’s current energy strategy, since the draft methodology doesn’t prohibit financing of oil exploration and extraction projects, which are already partially excluded since 2018.

Civil society calls to stop exploring for, extracting, shipping and burning fossil gas are becoming louder as the climate change bomb time is ticking. The science is clear that fossil gas is a significant driver of global warming and climate change – not just due to the CO2 emissions during combustion but also because of the methane leaks that occur during extraction and transport.

The civil society letter comes after a promising announcement from the EBRD’s President Odile Renaud-Basso last month, that by the beginning of 2023 the Bank will align all its activities with the Paris Agreement.

Governments have already stepped up their climate ambitions this year. Over the past six months, the United Kingdom, European Union, and the United States have all pledged to phase out fossil fuels finance, with explicit commitments to pursue diplomacy to encourage others to do the same.

The European Investment Bank announced its own fossil fuels exclusions in 2019, and the UN Secretary-General has called for international public banks to end all fossil fuel finance.

The EBRD is hosting its annual meeting this week with the theme “Building Back Better Economies.”

“Fossil fuels are currently propped up by the market’s failure to look a decade into the future, and the EBRD has the mandate to support countries towards a zero-carbon future,” the civil society letter reads. “The EBRD region is ready for the transition, and the EBRD’s efforts to promote a just transition need to go hand in hand with phasing out dependence on oil and gas.”

Serbia: key national plan risks cementing coal dependence

In March 2020 the Serbian Government held early public consultations on the country’s Spatial Plan for 2021-2035. According to its Strategic Environmental Assessment report, the Plan aims to facilitate “the achievement of national objectives of spatial development despite various challenges, including depopulation, urbanization, regional inequalities, rural development, environmental degradation, technical infrastructure and insufficient or unproductive utilization of available territorial capital.”

Therefore, the stated purpose of this 15-year national plan is not to address those challenges, but carry on with the development of various projects in all sectors of the economy despite them.

This attitude explains why the Spatial Plan envisages, among others, the construction of lignite or fossil gas power plants such as Novi Kovin (estimated 700 MW installed power), Štavalj (estimated 300 MW installed power), Кostolac B3 (estimated 350 MW installed power), TE-TO Novi Sad (estimated 340 MW installed power), TENT B3 (estimated 750 MW installed power), and Kolubara B (estimated 2 х 375 MW installed power), despite their well-known contribution to climate change as well as the degradation of the environment and livelihoods of communities.

This approach also explains why measures such as installing desulphurisation equipment and other pollution reduction controls at existing coal power plants are presented as some kind of novel, forward-looking protective measures, even though these have been a legal obligation since the Large Combustion Plants Directive went into force in 2018. In fact, Serbia’s flagrant breach of its obligation to cut power plants’ pollution is currently the subject of an infringement procedure launched by the Energy Community.

A second draft of the Spatial Plan was published in the autumn, without considerable changes, and its Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is currently subject to transboundary consultations. The interested public in Romania has until the 1 July to submit comments.

The way these consultations are held are a far cry from the requirements for effective public consultation in a transboundary procedure. The SEA report is being shared only in English and the actual Spatial Plan has not even been made available to Romanians. The Spatial Plan is de facto, the object of the consultation, so presenting only half of the information makes the whole process a procedural box-ticking exercise.

That said, the participation of Romanian civil society in the consultations can make a difference because if this plan goes ahead, many of the projects will have serious and irreversible transboundary environmental and health impacts. In the comments it submitted, Bankwatch Romania requests that all fossil fuel based projects are dropped from the Spatial Plan, that sources of mercury pollution in water bodies are monitored and reported in Serbia (because Romania sees high concentrations of mercury in its waters on the border water basins), and that pollution control equipment is operated (where it exists) or installed at existing coal power plants.

In fact, the Strategic Environmental Assessment report itself acknowledges that 10 out of the 39 proposed “solutions” in the Spatial Plan will have negative environmental impacts. The Report describes them, but gives no recommendation for dropping such measures or improving the situation concretely. Some of these so-called solutions for territorial development which were assessed with a serious cumulative negative environmental impact and in conflict with the goals of the SEA are: “safe and reliable supply of coal”, “increasing the production of energy from liquid and gaseous energy minerals and geothermal energy”; “development of coal exploitation in Kolubara and Kostolac basins”, “construction of new thermal capacities” and “reconstruction and construction of small hydro power plants”.

It is clear as daylight that all these projects are not only openly at odds with the SEA’s goals, they also run counter to Serbia’s commitments under the Paris Agreement and the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans. These projects are also nowhere in line with the EU’s 2050 decarbonisation ambition, considering Serbia aims to be an EU member by that time.

The Energy Community is about introduce new air quality acquis. Yet, as the Spatial Plan makes clear, the Serbian government is planning to expand the country’s lignite generation capacity to the point of far outweighing the capacities of power plants slated for closure. The Plan shows no intention to tackle the issue of air pollution and neighbouring countries are going to pay the price, alongside Serbian communities.

A first-of-its-kind modelling of SO2, NOx and dust pollution found coal power plants in the Western Balkans are behind an annual public cost of approximately EUR 3 billion. It also found pollution from these plants is responsible for 3906 premature deaths in Europe every year, and 2308 of them were attributed to Serbian plants alone.

According to this study, Romania was the EU neighbour most impacted, with an annual burden on the public budget estimated between EUR 0.5 – 1.1 billion, and 380 premature deaths – 198 of them linked to coal-fired power plants in Serbia.

The situation has not significantly improved since 2016. The Kostolac B de-sulphurisation project, the only one that has been finalised so far, has hardly ever worked. In fact, emissions of some pollutants have been on the rise in Serbia, and, as Bankwatch’s atmospheric modelling has already shown, they can travel thousands of kilometres beyond Serbia’s borders.

In the absence of tangible measures and actions that will reduce the transboundary impacts of Serbia’s energy sector, it is our request that the SEA report is not given the green light by the Romanian Ministry of Environment, and it is our hope that many civil society groups will join our call.

Romanian government’s coal phaseout blabber

The Romanian Energy Minister announced in an interview June 9 that Romania does not actually plan to give up all coal, but only hard coal. This news came as a shock as, just a few days before, the Romanian Recovery and Resilience Plan, published on the website of the executive, included language on the phaseout of coal-fired electricity generation from the energy mix by 2032 and support for a legislative and regulatory framework for private investments in renewable-based electricity production. The document also mentioned the creation of a Coal Commission and the elaboration of a clear calendar for replacement and closure of coal units.

“We have a phaseout for hard coal for 2030, and securing and greening the mines until 2032,” Energy Minister Virgil Popescu said in the interview. “The Oltenia Energy Company is in a restructuring program and I do not want to advance a phaseout date until we have approved the restructuring program”.

What the minister said in fact was that, for now, the Romanian government plans a phaseout for hard coal, but not lignite. Yet hard coal represents only 2% of Romania’s electricity production, with the largest amount of emissions in the entire economic system being attributed to lignite, which produces 17-20% of annual electricity. In 2019, according to EU-ETS data, in Romania hard coal emitted 1.18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), while lignite exceeded 12 million tonnes.

Hard coal is not enough

Not only does lignite need to be phased out as soon as possible for climate reasons, but hard coal-fired power plants would have to be shut down sooner for economic and environmental reasons anyway. One of them, Minita, has already been put in conservation. The thermal power plant exceeds the emission limits for sulphur dioxide (SO2) and dust (PM), substances that negatively affect human health, and cannot receive an Integrated Environmental Authorization (IEA), which is why Romania has been in an infringement procedure for four years. The entire Hunedoara Energy Complex (which operates two hard coal-fired power plants) is insolvent and had debts of RON 6 billion (approx EUR 1.2 billion) in 2020.

Although the European Union’s climate targets are clear, and the evidence that points to coal as the largest pollutant at national and global level is unequivocal, national authorities are not acting to match the level of urgency we are in. At the Oltenia Energy Complex, the restructuring plan provides for a lignite-based capacity of 1,650 MW in 2027, but there is also information that the company would have no more than 660 MW of capacity. The company has not set a date for the complete phaseout of coal, although the potential for renewable energy in the region is significant.

Just transition is left behind

Romanian coal regions have already submitted their Territorial Just Transition Plans to the Ministry of European Investment and Projects at the end of May, plans which will allow them to tap into the Just Transition Fund provided by the EU for the transformation away from coal. But proper planning at this level, including project proposals and mitigation of social impacts of mine and plant closures, requires a clear national phaseout date and timetable for gradually replacing coal. The Romanian government’s ambivalence about the coal phaseout date is, therefore, very problematic as it really hinders solid planning locally. It needs to give clear goals and directions for development, which municipalities can pursue in their more minute planning.

In Hunedoara county, the hard coal phaseout will lead to the dismissal of 4,000 employees in thermal power plants and mining areas. To solve this situation, social protection measures have been proposed such as compensatory wages and reducing the retirement age, but these are not a viable solution for younger staff who can reintegrate more easily into the labour market. An example of an initiative meant to help this approach belongs to the Romanian Wind Energy Association (RWEA) which is starting a program for the professional retraining of personnel in mining areas and other areas in energy transition.

In Gorj county, the situation is even more delicate. Although the TJTP identifies other opportunities for economic development, such as solar energy (with a potential of up to 60 GW), tourism, industry, recycling, carpentry and agriculture, the Oltenia Energy Complex does not seem to want to take advantage of this opportunity. Thus, it is unclear what will happen to a large part of the 12,000 employees, but also to those in related fields whose occupation supports the activity of coal-based electricity production. If national decision- makers do not set a date for the lignite phase out as well, the just transition in Gorj and Dolj (counties where Oltenia Energy operates) cannot be planned coherently.

A mistake that Romania risks repeating time and again is the lack or mimicry of public involvement in the decision to eliminate coal and post-coal planning. To add insult to injury, the government is now even miscommunicating about the ultimate coal phaseout date, the key information without which it’s hard to do any planning.

The European Commission cannot allow such bad practices to continue in Romania. The country has solid clean energy potential, and it has plenty of local actors in the coal regions which are interested in getting involved in preparing for life after coal. Brussels needs to put pressure on the central government to get its act together, set an ambitious phaseout date for all types of coal, and get planning together with local communities.

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