Belgrade incinerator plans raise burning questions
December 19, 2018
The planned Belgrade waste incinerator in Serbia, being considered for financing by the EBRD, EIB and IFC, is incompatible with increasing waste prevention and recycling rates and endangers the already precarious livelihoods of the 12,000 people who currently live from waste-picking in the city. The recently published environmental and social impact assessment for the project fails to resolve either of these issues, as well as numerous others.
Belgrade Solid Waste PPP ESIA
December 18, 2018
Comments and questions in English and Serbian submitted during the public consultation on the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment.
EkoSvest calls on Macedonian government to move to more rational renewable energy support system
December 10, 2018
Environmental NGO Eko-svest has this week called on the Macedonian government not to continue subsidising new renewable energy plants through the guaranteed buy-off of electricity at a guaranteed price and to instead move to a more competitive system with lower costs for end consumers.
European Parliament warns Balkan countries to stop destructive hydropower
December 6, 2018
The European Parliament urged the EBRD and EIB to review their support for hydropower plant projects in its last week’s resolutions on the European Commission’s 2018 reports on Albania and Montenegro. The votes come as a clear sign that the European institutions are starting to reconsider their support for hydropower as green energy.
Use of public money to support Tuzla 7 coal power plant must be investigated, shows new complaint
September 25, 2018
Sarajevo, Prague – Plans to use public money to guarantee a Chinese loan for the planned Tuzla 7 coal power plant could be illegal and need to be investigated by the Energy Community Secretariat, according to a formal complaint submitted to the regional body today by the Aarhus Resource Centre, Sarajevo, and CEE Bankwatch Network.
Environmentalism and democracy on the rise in Albania
August 1, 2018
Public participation is a prerequisite to functioning democracy. Environmental justice is crucial to sustainable development. But in Albania, a small, southeastern European country only recently emerging from decades-long, self-imposed isolation, democracy is still struggling to be born, and suffers from often being confused with unchecked capitalism.
Court complaints launched against Bosnia-Herzegovina hydropower permits
July 26, 2018
Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Nikšić, Podgorica, Prague – The Aarhus Resource Centre Sarajevo has submitted two court complaints [1] to the District Court in Banja Luka against the environmental permits for the Buk Bijela and Foča hydropower plants on the river Drina in Bosnia-Herzegovina near the border with Montenegro.
Gacko II, Bosnia and Herzegovina
May 15, 2018
The Republika Srpske government plans to build a new 350 MW lignite power plant in Gacko, near the town’s existing plant. After years of stagnation, in August 2022 it was reported that the Czech company Witkowitz was considering investing in the project.
Kamengrad lignite power plant, Bosnia-Herzegovina
May 15, 2018
An idea to build a power plant at the open-cast Kamengrad coal mine near Sanski Most in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been around for years, but in November 2017 it took a step forward with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Energy China International and the construction supplier Lager d.o.o. for a 2 x 215 MW plant.
The loan that made sense until it didn’t
May 11, 2018
During the annual meetings of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the bank is the subject of a complaint for policy violations via a EUR 200 million loan to Serbia’s state-owned energy utility: money earmarked to prepare the fossil fuels-based company for the realities of adhering to stricter EU legislation will instead enable it to extract and burn even more fossil fuels.
