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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Victory for civil society as EBRD cancels loan for controversial Croatian dam
Press release | 28 May, 2013Zagreb, May 28 – Croatian electricity company HEP and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have cancelled a EUR 123 million loan contract for the controversial Ombla underground hydropower plant near Dubrovnik, HEP has announced yesterday. The EBRD financing would have covered the biggest bulk of the EUR 152.4 million estimated to be needed for construction.
Read more[Campaign update] EBRD still not withdrawing from damaging Ombla hydropower project, NGOs call on bank to heed new evidence
Blog entry | 13 May, 2013Despite having a slew of good reasons not to support the damaging Ombla hydropower plan in Croatia, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development still didn’t confirm during recent meetings that it would withdraw from the project.
Read moreGuest post: New studies fail to prove that the Ombla hydroplant is fit for EBRD financing
Blog entry | 22 April, 2013The EBRD’s involvement in the Ombla hydropower plant project has from the start been a story of insufficient scrutiny and cutting procedural corners, followed by an attempt to patch things up by commissioning a belated nature impact assessment. The assessment highlights the Ombla area’s natural importance and captures some of the harm that would be done by the dam, but fails to draw the right conclusions, says Jagoda Munic, President of Friends of the Earth International and Biodiversity Programme Co-ordinator at Zelena akcija/Friends of the Earth Croatia.
Read moreRelated publications
The Upper Horizons complex, Bosnia and Herzegovina
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
