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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Skavica mega dam: Albanian court to scrutinise special law for U.S. contractor Bechtel
Press release | 21 September, 2023Nature conservation and human rights organisations have secured an important first milestone in the fight against the planned 210 MW Skavica hydropower plant in the Albanian municipalities of Kukës and Dibër.
Read moreChinese-built Dabar hydropower plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina set to destroy four Emerald and two Ramsar sites
Blog entry | 31 July, 2023If completed, the EUR 338 million project would violate a Recommendation of the Bern Convention No. 217 (2022) and leave tributaries of the Neretva river without water. People living in the Nevesinjsko karst field oppose resettlement and flooding of their houses and land.
Read moreBosnia and Herzegovina’s draft NECP: The good, the bad and the ugly
Blog entry | 20 July, 2023Bosnia and Herzegovina’s draft NECP finally looks to the future, plans no new fossil fuel power plants and significantly scales back unrealistic hydropower plans. But existing coal plants are to keep operating illegally and the draft is furtive about coal-to-biomass plans.
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Paravani Hydro Power Plant, Georgia
Briefing | 15 May, 2011 | Download PDFThe Turkish company Georgian Urban Energy (GUE) has requested a USD 44 million EBRD loan for the Paravani HPP, an 87 MW plant using a 14 km derivation tunnel in order to divert water from the Paravani river to the Mtkvari river. Bankwatch member group Green Alternative has deep concerns regarding the project’s potential negative impacts as well as its overall justification.
Letter to IFIs regarding Georgian hydropower plants
Advocacy letter | 23 July, 2009 | Download PDFWe have received the following responses: On July 29, 2009 from EBRD (pdf here). On August 4, 2009 from EIB (pdf here). On August 27, 2009 from World Bank (pdf here).
Dam Big Impact – The energy sector development in Georgia
Briefing | 23 July, 2009 | Download PDFThe energy policy of the Georgian government supported by a number of IFIs, aims at utilising the hydroenergy potential in the country in order to overcome the existing energy crisis. But effectively, this policy has the potential to cause significant negative impact on the environment, to drastically change the social and demographic situation in Georgia’s mountain areas and to devastate the existing cultural heritage.