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What will it take to make Balkan leaders realise new coal plants are a liability, not a gold mine?

This article first appeared in Balkan Green Energy News.

In April this year, the EU proved that whatever difficulties it might be going through, it can still make momentous decisions. It approved new pollution control standards for power stations, entitled the LCP BREF (1) The name might sound obscure, but the results should be concrete: The new standards are projected to save up to 20 000 lives annually across the EU.

On the EU’s doorstep in the Western Balkans, however, you would hardly know the LCP BREF existed. Almost all the countries in the region are planning to build new coal power plants, and there has been virtually no mention of the need for them to comply with the new standards.

This is strange, because not only is compliance with the new LCP BREF necessary for EU accession, but most Western Balkans already stipulate it as part of their domestic pollution control legislation (2). This means that as soon as the standards enter force in the EU this year, they also enter into force in most of the region.

CO2 remains an unsolvable problem with coal

Let’s be clear here: the LCP BREF is not a panacea. It limits emissions of SO2, NOx, PM10, HCl, HF and mercury, so it makes a great contribution to reducing coal’s health impacts. But it can’t do anything about the biggest problem with coal: CO2 and its contribution to climate change. There is no filter that can stop CO2 emissions, and if we are to limit climate change to 1.5-2 degrees, no new coal plants can be built. Unlike climate science, BREF is legally binding, and attempts to ignore it will likely backfire even sooner than attempts to ignore climate science.

Legislative changes need to be anticipated

Whether you have to comply with the LCP BREF right now or in a few years, it’s not something you want to ignore. With power stations lasting 40 years and more, they need to be designed in line with the very latest technical and environmental standards, and their promoters need to anticipate the rules coming up within the next few years. Failure to do so means additional and potentially expensive retrofits just a couple of years after a plant has opened.

With the chances of new coal plants being viable already at rock bottom, such additional costs could easily increase the risk of stranded assets. Only very few EU countries are planning new coal plants, because of low electricity prices, the growth of renewable energy, CO2 costs, and pollution control legislation that is gradually making polluters, instead of the public, pay the health costs of coal.

Yet governments and utilities in the Western Balkans are not doing their homework about recent trends and new legislation that awaits them in the next few years, with the result that their planned projects are dangerously out of date.

Earlier this year we revealed that none of the planned coal power plants seem to have properly taken the costs of CO2 into account in their financial planning. Now we’ve crunched the numbers for the LCP BREF and found that none of the plants has proven compliance with the new standards either.

Planned Balkan coal plants not in compliance with new BREF

There are eight units currently being actively planned in the region. Out of these, five would violate the new standards while for three there is insufficient information available. Kostolac B3 in Serbia, Pljevlja II in Montenegro, and the Oslomej reconstruction in Macedonia have been designed in line with the older Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) Annex V standards, but not the new BREF. Tuzla 7 and Banovići in Bosnia-Herzegovina don’t even go this far: Tuzla 7 is bound only by the even more outdated local legislation while the environmental permit for Banovići is unclear about what standards are relevant. For the remaining three units, Ugljevik III units 1 and 2, and Kosova e Re, the information about likely emissions is still unclear.

Kostolac B3 in Serbia is the only plant for which the new BREF has even been mentioned in its official documentation. It is currently undergoing an environmental impact assessment process, in which local groups have commented on the need for the plant to comply with the BREF. The only reaction so far is an amendment in the study stating that the plant would be an existing plant under the BREF and thus allowed to pollute more than new plants. Even if some retrofits are necessary, the study argues, this is a normal procedure after running a plant for a few years, and thus nothing to worry about.

Neither of these claims is true: Any plant receiving its integrated environmental permit after the LCP BREF enters force in the EU is a new one, according to the BREF definitions, and has to stick to the highest standards. As for undertaking retrofits, the study authors should really check the plant’s feasibility assessment, which shows that the plant will be unviable even with a low CO2 price.

The story is not dissimilar with Pljevlja II in Montenegro. Despite being hailed – like all the plants – as being in line with EU standards, it turns out that it is in line only with outdated ones. Local NGOs pointed out during the environmental assessment process that the plant must comply with the new LCP BREF, but they have received no reaction from the authorities as yet.

Montenegro and Serbia may seem like the most alarming cases due to being ahead of others in EU accession, but Bosnia-Herzegovina is if anything a more worrying case, due to the number of projects planned. The Stanari lignite power plant which started commercial operation last September is already out of date compared to the Industrial Emissions Directive and will now be out of line with the BREF as well. If Ugljevik III, Tuzla  7, and Banovići are all completed and all out of line with the BREF, the country will end up with a significant burden on its hands.

If the Balkans electricity utilities really ran on commercial lines, as they are bound by the Energy Community Treaty to do, they would never risk these projects. The new LCP BREF is but one more indicator that coal is an increasing liability, and the Balkan countries should be looking much more carefully at what’s going on around them. After all, the region has ample potential for wind, solar and energy savings combined with a relatively small population, so if this region can’t make a transition to sustainable energy, who can?

NOTES:

  1. Large Combustion Plants Best Available Techniques Reference Document
  2. Albania, the Federation entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo Macedonia and Montenegro. Serbia and Republika Srpska both require the application of best available techniques but do not specify that the EU reference document should be used.

Powerline to nowhere: Georgian villages take stand against badly routed transmission lines

Construction on a powerline in Georgia was put on hold one month ago after villagers blocked excavation machinery in the village of Pasanauri.  About 150 residents contested the routing, claiming that the project threatens people’s health and safety. The police intervened to halt the May 10 protest, which resulted in the arrest of six.

Touted as a strategic energy project by the Georgian government, the 100 kilometre-long Ksani-Stepantsminda power line is part of a broader transmission corridor extension deal that would connect Georgia with neighbouring countries. The powerline would boost Georgia’s electricity exports and cross-border transmission with Armenia and Russia.  But Georgian environmentalists have doubts about Russia’s readiness to trade electricity with its southern neighbor, arguing that Russia has no plans to build connecting lines on its side of the border before 2021. They also argue that the construction of the 500 kV stretch within Georgia has happened without a clearly defined route in mind and proper risk assessment and consultation with the affected villages.

Protests against the high voltage line spread to several villages in the Khando Gorge in the days following the Pasanauri rally. In response to the events, Kakha Kaladze, Georgia’s Minister of Energy, publicly blamed Bankwatch member group Green Alternative for the dissent. Locals and Green Alternative reject the allegations, as villagers say the protest was a spontaneous reaction to the project promoter’s bulldozing over their rights to have a say in the siting of the voltage towers and the size of the buffer corridor. All those arrested at Pasanauri were later released with a GEL 400-600 fine for disobedience, approximately a two month budget for a poor family of four in the mountains.

The Ksani-Stepantsminda powerline is being developed by the state electricity transmission network operator and financed by the German development bank KfW. Green Alternative legally challenged the project’s environmental permit in November last year, claiming that the ministry had rubber stamped it in the absence of a proper routing and risk assessment.

The Ksani-Stepantsminda transmission lines have received the blessings of other international financiers, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).  The EBRD financed the Dariali hydropower plant 70 kilometres north of Pasanauri, which is contested due to significant environmental and natural hazards. The electricity generated by Dariali and other hydropower plants in the Kazbegi region should be transmitted the Ksani-Stepantsminda line.  A protest similar to the one in Psanauri over a routing of a powerline connecting the Dariali plant with a substation sparked heated disagreements in the village of Tsdo in May last year.

Doubts about the route of the Ksani-Stepantsminda cropped up in other places like the Sno Gorge. Protests are likely to continue unless the state reviews the route and engages with the affected villages prior to entering with bulldozers.

A Bulgarian oligarch, tax avoidance and a village that tries to move: how Sofia fails to implement EU pollution laws

In the last couple of years I have visited over ten lignite mining regions in the Balkans and spoken to equally as many local communities’ representatives. While for some politicians these places are reasons for nationalist and economic pride, let’s face it: they are not pretty and the people living there do not have the healthiest or most fulfilling lives. But never before did I have such a strong feeling of helplessness and defiance at the same time as I did when in Golemo Selo in Bulgaria.

Home to the 540MW Bobov Dol lignite power plant, coal mines and storages and ash disposal sites, the 600-strong community, located only some 60 km south-west of Sofia, does not have it easy. Fully subordinated to the Bobov Dol municipality, administratively speaking, the village of Golemo Selo basically has no say in the approval of the power plant’s operations, no financial gain and not even many jobs for the local people either.

It’s as if your landlord decided to bring someone into your house, asked for your opinion, and then even though you said you weren’t thrilled, continued to charge you the same rent. Meanwhile the new person dumps their garbage on your balcony and expects you to clean it up.

Sustained pollution triggers response from Brussels

In 2009, the Bobov Dol coal power plant was the second biggest dust or particulate matter (PM10) polluter among all coal capacities in the EU, and has been the main source of stress for the locals of Golemo Selo. On one hand, there’s the black coal dust which comes in big clouds over the narrow streets a few times a day when a coal transporting train is unloaded at the power plant. When the cloud is gone, locals can fill their time with wiping off the limestone white dust emitted by the power plant’s desulphurisation units. This is a routine they perform 5-6 times a day.

The problem of PM10 pollution in Bulgaria is a long and soaring cause of dispute between Brussels and Sofia. The row dates back to 2009, when the European Commission first warned Bulgaria against failure to fulfil its air quality obligations, in particular to keep periods with unhealthy pollution levels as short as possible. In April this year, the European Court of Justice issued the judgement that Bulgaria is still infringing the European legislation on air quality, thus failing to protect the health and well-being of its citizens.

The Court’s ruling notes that “it is apparent from the annual reports on air quality, submitted by Bulgaria from 2008 onwards, that the daily and annual limit values for PM10 concentrations were exceeded systematically and continuously throughout the territory”. (Only one region was an exception to this. It was not Bobov Dol.)

There’s no official air monitoring station in the vicinity of Bobov Dol, but the monitoring device installed by Greenpeace Bulgaria showed continuous breaches of the limits in April.

A graph showing that the PM10 levels in Golemo Selo, Bulgaria, are often breaching the limit set by EU regulations and that on several occasion, the limit has been breached tenfold.
Pollution levels in Golemo Selo regularly exceeded EU limits for PM10 with some extreme peaks according to Greenpeace monitoring in April 2017.

Annex XI to the EU Directive 2008/50 on Ambient Air Quality – entitled ‘Limit values for the protection of human health’ – specifies that a daily level of 50 μg/ m3 for PM10 must not be exceeded more than 35 times a calendar year. The annual limit lies at 40 μg/m3 per day, averaged over one calendar year. Bulgaria passed its deadline for meeting those limit values already in 2007.

Pollution and tax avoidance after privatisation

In 2007 the second unit of the Bobov Dol power plant was taken offline for failing to undertake the necessary investments in modernisation to comply with emissions standards. The locals remember some relief, as there was one unit less emitting the dust that defines their daily routines.

However, the miracle did not last too long: after a disputed privatisation process the Bobov Dol power plant landed in the hands of the controversial oligarch Hristo Kovachki and his consortium Energia MK. In the same year, unit two went back online.

Energia MK registered the Bobov Dol power plant company on the Seychelles, a known tax haven. After a tax-haven restriction law was passed in Bulgaria in 2014 the plant (and other companies connected to Kovachki) reregistered simultaneously under a shell-company address in London. The headquarters are now in a peaceful London district, in an empty house with a dried palm tree in-front.

A street in London. A dry palm tree stands in front of one of the houses.
The London street where Bobov Dol and other companies of Hristo Kovachki are registered now.

Hristo Kovachki himself has been charged with tax fraud in 2009 but has not been convicted. He has been a target of the national revenue agency and of labour authorities a few more times throughout the years.

The locals I have spoken to do not remember a formal consultation procedure before the unit went back online, even though it was required by law. At the time of acquisition, the new owners announced investments in pollution control measures in the amount of 60 million euros. But since then numerous reports of the company bypassing pollution control filters have been filed by locals and by Bulgarian environmental groups.

Locals taking matters into their own hands

These days, Vasil Vasev, the mayor of Golemo Selo is collecting signatures for a referendum, at the end of which the hope is that the village would no longer be in the administration of Bobov Dol municipality, but in that of Dupnitsa, another town just 6 km away. Another hope is that some of the taxes paid by the local community to the higher administrative body would return in the form of local development projects and environmental improvement measures. (

Bulgarian media reported recently that the Bobov Dol municipality would not approve the organisation of the referendum.  Some delays caused by legal action are therefore likely before the locals get a chance to vote and finally make their voice heard.

Whatever the results of the referendum, the fact remains that the Bobov Dol power plant is a relic of an obsolete technology, which is a constant source of stress for the local community, contributes greatly to the country’s poor air quality and is in the hands of a tycoon investigated for bypassing the law on numerous occasions.

I do hope the determination of the locals to change the state of affairs will have a domino effect in the country’s long forgotten coal communities and set the direction for a diversified regional development.

Coal dependent regions across Europe are facing a downward trend in coal production and the number of employees in the sector has been dropping constantly, so the time is ripe for putting in place a just transition for these communities.

The worst was yet to come – ludicrous air pollution in Romanian village

The small Romanian village with the poetic-sounding name of Rosia de Jiu was the last leg of our independent dust monitoring tour through the Balkans. After finding some already alarming levels of air pollution in other countries, we were prepared for similar results in Romania. We couldn’t have expected such bad air, though.

You really need a local guide to help you navigate towards to the village of Rosia de Jiu. Well hidden behind a (now illegal) coal storage depot in the town of Rovinari, you have to take a little side street off the main road and have a trained eye to spot the sign towards the village. It’s like a well-hidden secret. That narrow road always reminds me of what they say when you exit an airport “no return beyond this point”. Sadly enough, the approximately 20 families which still live there do often find themselves in a dead end situation.

The village, situated near the existing Rovinari lignite power plant, has been exposed for years to extreme air pollution, originating from the power plant, the two open-pit lignite mines which surround it – Rosia and Pinoasa – the illegal coal storage depot nearby, open conveyor belts and heavy trucks going to the mines and back right in front of their houses. The Rovinari Power Plant is the only of the four operated by Oltenia Energy Complex (OEC) to have its coal delivered on a transport belt directly from the lignite mines and the deposits surrounding it.

Whenever we talk to the locals, there are two constant things they complain about: noise and dust. They have been promised resettlement since 2007, but the mining company has not made any progress in this regard, as the mines are not envisaged to expand towards the village, resettlement is not a priority.

The first results made our jaws drop

The health effects of inhalable PM are well documented by the World Health Organization (WHO) and include respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The WHO recommends levels for the more coarse PM10 of not above 20 μg/m3 for the annual average and 50 μg/m3 for the 24-hour mean. Because air quality data is unreliable in most countries in the region, Bankwatch has done its own monitoring in different countries since autumn last year.

Our independent particulate matter (PM) monitoring device was installed in Rosia de Jiu on April 26.

Since the machine was finally in our home country, that first evening we watched the measurements online in real time. We couldn’t believe our eyes – it was for the first time we had seen concentrations of above 1500 µg/m3 for an hourly average, and some of the minute-by-minute values went up to values of over 6000 µg/m3!

Particulate matter levels for PM 10 and PM 2.5 in Rosia de Jiu, Romania at different times of day and EU limits for PM10 and PM2.5. The graph shows extremely high peaks for PM 10. The highest value for PM 10 was recorded on May 2, at 10PM local time, with 1783 micrograms per cubic metre. Even though PM 2.5 levels fade in comparison to the PM 10 ones, they have shown peaks of over 100 µg/m3 on 43 instances.
Graph: PM 10 and PM 2.5 levels in Rosia de Jiu at different times of day. (The thin vertical bars represent hourly mean values for PM 2.5 and PM 10. The straight horizontal lines represent EU level standards as per the Air Quality Directive.)

We thought something must have gone wrong and went back to Rosia de Jiu to check. But no, nothing was wrong, that is what the people there have to breathe every day.

Over the 30 days of monitoring PM 10 and PM 2.5 emissions in Rosia de Jiu, it was only on two days that the EU 24-hour limit for PM 10 was not exceeded. In other words over 93 percent of days the PM 10 concentration was above the limit, often times 5-6 times above the allowed daily average of 50 µg/m3.  The EU limit on PM 2.5 was exceeded on 23 of the 30 days of monitoring.  The EU’s Air Quality Directive allows 35 exceedances of the PM 10 limit for 24 hours over the course of one year. In Rosia de Jiu, this is for sure not the case.

The impact of mining

Distinctly different from the previous locations is that the hourly measurements shows large differences between concentrations of PM 10 and PM 2.5. In other locations, PM 2.5 represented approximately 75% – 80% of the PM 10 emissions, while in Rosia de Jiu this is clearly not the case. The high levels of coarse particles, PM 10, are indicative of its primary sources: the open-cast mine, the coal deposit, open conveyor belts and unpaved road to the mine. PM 2.5 emissions are linked with combustion processes and should therefore always be measures in places where coal power plants operate.

Daily average of particulate matter levels for PM 10 and PM 2.5 in Rosia de Jiu, Romania and EU limits for both pollutants. The graph shows how both PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels exceed the legally allowed limit: PM 2.5 on 23 out of 30 days of monitoring (77%), PM 10 on 28 days out of 30 (93%).
Graph: Daily average of PM 10 and PM 2.5 levels in Rosia de Jiu.

There are several hourly PM 10 peaks, with the highest recorded on May 2, at 10PM local time, with 1783 micrograms per cubic metre. During seven hours of the observation period the PM 10 concentration has been above 1000 µg/m3. This is 20 times above the EU limit. The graph also illustrates how the PM 10 levels peak most around 8AM local time when work starts at the nearby lignite mine, or around 1PM when the shifts change. Even though PM 2.5 levels fade in comparison to the PM 10 ones, they have shown peaks of over 100 µg/m3 on 43 instances.

While PM 10 emissions are said not to stay in the air for more than a few hours and not travel more than a few metres, if the concentrations are constant every day it really turns into breathing dust instead of air for this community.

To add to this terrible pollution, noise measurements carried out in November 2016 also show how right the locals are to complain, as the noise produced by the power plant and by the conveyor belts carrying the coal from the mines was above the regulated level at all times.

https://vimeo.com/191766588

The small community of Rosia de Jiu has suffered enough from being at the heart of the lignite operations. Most of the locals are now retired and deserve a peaceful life with their families, who now won’t visit for fear of exposing their children to this pollution.

Coal mining is dirty and unfair and leaving long term scars. OEC, the energy utility operating the power plant and the mines near Rosia de Jiu, needs to make it up to these people in the 11th hour.

From Enver Hoxha to the EBRD (and back) – hydropower in Albania

Enver Hoxha, the former communist dictator in Albania, ruled in such a bizarre way that he found himself ostracised by other communist rulers. Among others he flooded the country of 3 million people with 750 000 concrete bunkers. Those bunkers were built ignoring people, nature but also military rules – as some of them were facing each other.

While the majority of bunkers is now being dismantled for scrap metal, the Albanian government, encouraged by international donors like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the World Bank or Germany’s development bank KfW, has set its eyes on another concrete folly. Over 300 hydropower plants (HPP) are in various stages of planning or preparation seem to take the place of the bunkers in this predominantly mountainous country.

Two images of a hill with a water pipe of the Ternove hydropower project. They show how the construction is completely inadequate to avoid landslides.
A hill with a water pipe of the Ternove hydropower project. They show how the construction is completely inadequate to avoid landslides.

This week Bankwatch visited the Ternove HPP (8,4 MW), developed by Canadian Hydro Investment and Albanian Theodori company near the city of Bulqizë in central Albania. The plant, financed by the EBRD together with Societe Generale was put into operation last year. Additional canals that will harvest more water are still under construction. The project was brought to our attention because locals in several villages have been protesting for several years against the plant, fearing impacts on irrigation and thus their income and livelihood that is mostly based on farming.

The Ternove hydropower plant is taking water from the glacier lake Liqeni i Zi (Black Lake), a nationally recognised protected site, connecting it with several water streams and several other glacier lakes through tunnels and canals.

With this project the EBRD, proud of its environmental standards, looks as if it was trying to make Enver Hoxha proud, putting aside nature and people while “marching towards the bright future”. Thus it does not matter that the project lacks proper anti-erosion measures, converting the whole hill into a series of cracks that are prone to landslides and erosion. Locals fear this will likely damage the access roads they use to get to the forest and pastures.

The set of canals that is connecting the lake with other streams and lakes brings a significant amount of sediments, changing the hydrology of the glacier lake.

The fact that the company has been repeatedly fined by the Forest Inspectorate for proceeding with excavation works without the necessary permit only adds to the impression that when it comes to the implementation of its environmental policies, the EBRD has not monitored the project closely enough.

A water canal made of concrete, running along a hill.
The several kilometre long network of concrete canals will hardly boost the region’s tourist potential.

Locals fear lack of water

In several villages people protested, fearing that the hydro power plant will deprive them of irrigation water. The protests were clearly sparked by the lack of consultations about the project and its impacts. It is indeed difficult to assess the project’s impact as it not only depends on the availability of water, but also on the irrigation infrastructure.

The Strikçan village, some 22km east of Bulqizë depends on irrigation from July to September. The villagers collect 20.000 LEK (~150 EUR) every year to pay a local worker to clean the irrigation canal with pickaxe and shovel.

A water pipe lying beneath a very steep dirt hill.
The water pipes are lying under steep hills that are prone to landslides.

Recently, the village received a few hundred meters of plastic tubes from the regional administration to reduce losses in some problematic parts of the canal. But a section of the canal is crossing a landslide prone area on steep mountain slopes. The village would need a more substantial investment to enforce the canal. The village mayor estimates that such works would cost between 10 and 25.000 EUR – far more than the villagers can collect.

It is no surprise then that the villagers are frustrated when they see their government providing investors with tax exemptions or feed-in tariffs, and even worse, access to the water that they so desperately need.

The EBRD shouldn’t repeat Hoxha’s mistake: country’s massive irrational investment in concrete bunkers had back then already dealt a blow to Albania’s economy. Albania doesn’t need more concrete pumped into its land, rivers and lakes. It needs investments that address real local needs. The EBRD could learn that if only they sat down for five minutes with the bright and bold people in Bulqizë and its surrounding villages.

 

Klara Sikorova (senior researcher) and Igor Vejnovic (hydro policy officer) contributed to this blog post.

With thanks to Olsi Nika, EcoAlbania and the local activists and communities for their contribution at the field trip.

The Balkans may become the achilles heel of EU-China climate leadership

As the EU-China summit kicks off today, all eyes are watching the EU’s and China’s leaked reaction to a possible US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. With a gaping void where US climate leadership used to be, there is both an urgent need and an opportunity for the EU and China to step in to fill the gap and ramp up their climate action.

Both the EU and China have done much to tackle carbon emissions: The EU, as well as setting emissions reductions targets, is starting to phase out the use of coal for power generation and is aiming for an almost fully decarbonised energy system by 2050. In 2013, its house bank, the European Investment Bank, virtually excluded financing for coal plants.

China has announced the closure of around 1000 coal mines and a three-year ban on opening new ones, as well as stopping the construction of over 100 new coal power plants with over120 GW capacity. Its coal use appears to have peaked in 2013, leading to drops in greenhouse gas emissions.

However neither the EU nor China – along with many other countries – has yet done enough. The latest UNEP Emissions Gap report calculates that the world is on track for at least 3 degrees celsius warming by 2100, compared to the Paris Agreement’s aim of limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees.

And one of the areas where both the EU and China need to rapidly step up their action is on the EU’s doorstep, in the Balkans, as we explain in a new briefing published today.

At least six new coal power plants – which would not be financed by Western international financial institutions – could be built in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and even within the EU, in Romania, financed by low-interest loans from Chinese state banks. This is part of a wider trend of Chinese financing of coal plants worldwide.

No new fossil fuel power plants can be built globally at all if the aims of the Paris Agreement are to be reached, according to research by Oxford University. This includes not only coal, which in 2014 was responsible for around 46 percent of global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion, but also gas.

But new coal plants on the EU’s doorstep are particularly alarming, as they threaten to undermine the EU’s climate and energy policy as the countries enter the EU and start to influence its policies.

The EU has a chance to influence such investments through the EU accession process and the Energy Community Treaty. Both of these require the Balkan countries to gradually comply with EU energy, environment and competition rules. These, together with low electricity wholesale prices, have contributed to squeezing out new coal plants within the EU and should be doing the same in the Balkans. But in recent years the European Commission has concentrated on other issues and has been slow to make sure environmental and state aid rules are strengthened and enforced.

The way forward depends on joint action. China can have the quickest and most decisive short-term impact by refusing to finance coal plants in the Balkans and more widely making sure that its international financing is brought into line with its impressive progress in tackling carbon emissions and air pollution on the domestic level. At the same time, the EU needs to show the Balkan countries that it is serious about their accession into the EU if they are willing to accept its policies and standards.

Together, these moves could contribute to a relatively rapid transformation of the energy system in a region with a relatively small population and high potential for wind, solar and energy savings – but only if the EU and China act quickly. Failing this, another four decades or so of coal lock-in and policy headaches for the EU beckons.

Read more

Briefing: China – souther-eastern Europe energy projects update (pdf)