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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The European Commission, an EBRD shareholder that should start acting like one
Blog entry | 1 March, 2012Recent Balkan hydro projects suggest the European Commission could make much better use of its shareholder role in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Read moreCroatian civil society groups ask new government to withdraw from Ombla hydro project
Press release | 16 December, 2011Croatian environmental groups today held a protest action outside of the Croatian parliament calling on the country’s new government not to go ahead with the controversial EBRD-financed EUR 150 million Ombla HPP project.
Read moreEBRD to suspend Ombla loan disbursement until further eco studies are completed
Bankwatch in the media | 28 November, 2011The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has said it would not disburse the recently-approved 123.2 million Euro loan for construction of the Ombla hydropower plant near Dubrovnik before the environmental impacts of the project are assessed.
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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
