
Southeast Europe Energy Policy Officer
Email: pippa.gallop AT bankwatch.orgTel.: +385 99 755 97 87
Pippa works as Bankwatch Southeast Europe energy advisor, with a specialisation in coal and hydropower in the Western Balkans. She is based in Zagreb, Croatia and speaks English, Croatian and rusty German.
More from Pippa Gallop
The global Covid-19 pandemic has stopped neither hydropower companies nor nature defenders from pursuing their goals in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The latest flashpoint is the Neretva basin, where locals and NGOs are resisting construction with blockades and lawsuits.
Non-governmental organisations from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro on Friday submitted a complaint to the Espoo Convention on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s failure to carry out a transboundary environmental impact assessment for a series of dams planned near the Montenegrin border.
In recent years Montenegro was forced to stop granting incentives for renewable energy projects due to public outcry about small hydropower decimating several small rivers and enriching businesses close to the ruling party. Now a new draft Law on Energy looks set to relaunch the incentives scheme. Why haven’t lessons been learned?
As the European Commission moves to legislate on criteria regulating what can be defined as sustainable investments, Bankwatch warns that activities such as waste incineration, gas combustion and nuclear energy must not be allowed to sneak in at the last minute.
The EIB-financed Ilovac hydropower plant was built on the river Kupa in north-west Croatia at around the same time as scientists established the existence of a new fish species there – Alburnus sava. Since the dam’s construction, the species has not been found at the site. Has Alburnus sava’s habitat been degraded for just 1.4 MW of installed power?





