Croatia

Building the Energy Union, the European Commission pretends that all is well for renewables in Croatia and unnecessarily fixates on diversifying gas supply instead of managing demand.

Despite collecting impressive evidence from 20 years of failed public-private partnerships in central and eastern Europe, an EBRD-financed study by the Economist Intelligence Unit concludes to continue using the controversial financing scheme.

Today we're relieved in Zagreb as one energy project that could have had a destructive impact on Croatia's future has lost its financing and thus its chances of going ahead are drastically reduced: I’m speaking about the infamous Ombla dam, a project for an underground hydropower plant that would have practically destroyed a protected area close to Dubrovnik.

Despite 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.

Yesterday, Green Action/Zelena Akcija, Greenpeace and Green Istria staged a spooky public action to raise attention for the findings of a new study that predicts approximately 17 early deaths annually due to the planned new 500 MW unit at the Plomin coal power plant in Croatia.

The 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.

Yesterday Greenpeace's legendary ship Arctic Sunrise joined in the campaign against Plomin C, a coal-fired power plant in Croatia.

The Plomin “C” coal power plant in Croatia is illegal - so why has its environmental impact assessment been given the thumbs up?