The countries of the Energy Community Treaty have diverse energy mixes, but hydropower has traditionally played a strong role in many of them. Albania is almost completely reliant on dams for its domestic electricity generation, followed by Georgia with an average of 80 per cent of electricity generated by hydropower and Montenegro with an average of 55 per cent.
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Background
The countries of the Energy Community Treaty have diverse energy mixes, but hydropower has traditionally played a strong role in many of them. Albania is almost completely reliant on dams for its domestic electricity generation, followed by Georgia with an average of 80 per cent of electricity generated by hydropower and Montenegro with an average of 55 per cent.
But what started as a strength is becoming a liability. More and more erratic rainfall is exposing how vulnerable hydropower is to climate change, while its damaging impacts on biodiversity, groundwater and sediment transportation are becoming better understood.
This has not stopped decision-makers’ zealous plans to develop the sector, including in countries like Ukraine hydropower has not traditionally played a major role. Decades-old projects are still being pushed against all economic and environmental logic, while a rash of small hydropower plants driven by feed-in tariff schemes has destroyed rivers and streams across southeast Europe.
The good news is that there are alternatives, with lower costs for the environment and also, increasingly, for the public purse, and that resistance to the unnecessary destruction of life-giving rivers is increasing day by day.
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Court cancels environmental permit for Buk Bijela hydropower plant
Bankwatch in the media | 30 May, 2019The Banja Luka District Court has canceled the environmental permit for the planned 93 MW Buk Bijela hydropower plant on the river Drina in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Aarhus Resource Center in Sarajevo has announced today, following the court’s positive 13 May ruling on the Center’s complaint, CEE Bankwatch Network said in a press release. Court cancels environmental permit for Buk Bijela hydropower plant
Read moreBosnia-Herzegovina: Environmental permit for Buk Bijela hydropower plant cancelled
Press release | 30 May, 2019The Banja Luka District Court has cancelled the environmental permit for the planned 93 MW Buk Bijela hydropower plant on the river Drina in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Aarhus Resource Center in Sarajevo has announced today, following the court’s positive 13 May ruling on the Center’s complaint.
Read moreSpeaking to IFIs may be only way for environmental activists to convey message to right address
Bankwatch in the media | 21 May, 2019Ana Colovic Lesoska, executive director at the Center for environmental research and information Eko-svest from Skopje, is one of six winners of the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize, a first for the prestigious award to go to North Macedonia.Source: Sp
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Briefing | 18 December, 2023 | Download PDFThe Upper Horizons hydropower complex has been planned since the mid-20th century, and is planned to consist of three plants — Dabar, Nevesinje and Bileća — linked by a series of tunnels and channels. If completed, it would have a devastating impact on the karst ecosystems of eastern Herzegovina and beyond.
The Ulog hydropower plant on the river Neretva, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Briefing | 18 December, 2023 | Download PDFThe Ulog plant, with a 53-metre high dam, is currently being built on the upper Neretva in the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the middle of a nominated candidate Emerald site – an area which should be protected under the Bern Convention.
Joint Statement On the Expansion of the Emerald Network in Countries of the Western Balkans by scientists and representatives of NGOs
Statement | 13 February, 2023 | Download PDFIn early December 2022, 39 scientists and representatives of NGOs from Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Switzerland joined efforts to prepare a shadow list and a map o
