The EU needs to exert greater pressure on the Western Balkans to decarbonize its coal-fired energy system, because pollution levels are still well above the compliance threshold. Report released on Tuesday (September 7).
More than three and a half years after the Western Balkan countries reached the EU’s pollution limit deadline in accordance with the Energy Community Treaty, pollution in the region is still more than six times the allowable level.
There are only 18 coal-fired power plants in the Western Balkans and 221 in Europe, but the sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from these coal-fired power plants are twice and a half that of the entire EU fleet.
According to a report by the Central and Eastern European environmental and human rights organization CEE Bankwatch Network, Serbia alone exceeded the sulfur dioxide emissions of the entire European Union last year.
Excessive pollution comes with a heavy price. Sulfur dioxide produced when burning fossil fuels can cause air pollution and have serious health effects, especially on the respiratory system. According to the report, between 2018 and 2020, it caused 12,000 deaths-7,000 in the European Union and 3,700 in the Western Balkans.
Emission limits were included in the 2005 treaty that established the Energy Community, which brought together the European Union and its neighbors to create a pan-European energy market.
However, according to Janez Kopač, Director of the Energy Community Secretariat, the gap between the EU and the Western Balkans has been widening in the past two years because the Western Balkans have not fulfilled their obligations and the EU has been decarbonizing very quickly.
Cut financial incentives
Nearly 10% of the total coal-fired power generation is exported to the European Union as cheap electricity, which is not affected by the carbon price imposed within the European Union.
“Dirty electricity from the Western Balkans, so all exporters, mainly Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, are doing environmental dumping and health dumping. This completely violates trade rules,” Kopac said on Friday (September 3) Said at a press conference held to commemorate the release of the report.
Pippa Gallop, CEE Bankwatch’s energy consultant for Southeast Europe, said Europe needs to take stronger action than in recent years. One way is to use the recently proposed carbon boundary adjustment mechanism to block coal and electricity imports. Gallup said that just seeing a proposal to price carbon-intensive electricity entering the European Union is strong.
The report also called on the EU to strengthen the “Energy Community Treaty”, so violators will face huge fines. Kopac said that in addition, the EU can put forward more conditions on pre-accession funding and resolve this issue in every pre-accession report.
All of this helps to eliminate the economic motivation of political leaders in the Western Balkans to subsidize coal power generation without proper air pollution control.
Denis Zisko of the Bosnian NGO Tuzla Center for Ecology and Energy said: “Basically, in order to keep this machine running and profit from it, continue to kill people from their country and neighboring countries. It will be more profitable.”.
[Edited by Frédéric Simon]
