Page 11 - EBRD_newspaper_May2017

May 9, 2017
Southeastern Europe
bne IntelliNews Daily 11
Eastern Europe counts cost of air pollution
cities in our countries of operation don’t use energy efficiently, and they also in many case use fuel types that are detrimental to health like burning coal and wood for heating in an urban environment.”
Air pollution from coal-fired power sta- tions, especially those located close to ma- jor cities, is another problem in the Western Balkans, as well as countries like Poland that rely to a large extent on coal power. While the EU has set the target of boosting renewable generation to 20% of total generation by 2020, investments into solar and wind power have been held back in the eastern part of the bloc by powerful hydrocarbon lobbies and confus- ing and ever-changing legislation.
The Western Balkans is one of the areas initially targeted by the EBRD’s Green Cities Programme, along with the Caucasus, Bela- rus and Moldova. In 2015, the bank approved a new green economy transition approach, with the goal of 40% of its investment volume – which totals around €10bn a year – being in the green space by 2020, a target Jollands describes as “pretty ambitious”.
Under the Green Cities Programme, which has a lifetime of five years and a budget en- velope of €250mn, the bank works with cities to draw up a Green City Action Plan (GCAP), which identifies investment priorities. The bank is working with cities with a population of over 100,000 that are willing to undertake a GCAP and where there is a “trigger project” – an investment project that clearly tackles environmental issues.
It has already signed two investment pro- jects – the green buses in Tbilisi and a pro- gramme for energy saving in public build- ings in Chisinau – and has GCAPs up and
Clare Nuttall in Bucharest and Valentina Dimitrievska in Skopje
On some winter days Skopje residents say the city looks like it has been attacked by chemical weapons. The smell of the air is terrible, leaving those who breathe it with a bitter taste in their mouth and watering eyes, and forcing some of them to wear pro- tective masks.
Heavy smog is not very frequent in the Macedonian capital but it’s hard to shift once it envelops the city, which is surrounded by mountains on all sides. This allows the pol- lution from heavy traffic – mostly old cars – and smoke from wood-burning fires to accumulate when there is no wind or rain to disperse it.
Many residents of Skopje and other towns in Macedonia – Tetovo has the unenviable status of having the worst air pollution of any city in Europe – suffer from respiratory problems, as well as being at higher risk of heart disease, strokes and lung cancer. The local health authorities say 30%-35% of deaths during the winter in Skopje in the last few years were linked to air pollution.
World Health Organisation (WHO) data on PM10 and the smaller and more harm- ful PM2.5 particles shows that cities in the Western Balkans have the worst air pollu-
tion in the continent. Tetovo, the home of the Jugohrom Ferroalloys plant, is in first place, and Skopje in third. Cities from Bosnia & Her- zegovina, Bulgaria and Macedonia are close to the top of the list (if Turkey is excluded), alongside three Polish cities.
The root causes of air pollution in cities across Eastern Europe and Eurasia show some similarities. Car ownership is boom- ing, adding to emissions especially in cities not built for large numbers of cars and that therefore suffer from high levels of conges- tion. As incomes remain relatively low, many of the cars are old, often second hand mod- els imported from Western Europe or Japan.
“Many of our cities are at a stage in their development were everybody wants to buy a car,” says Lin O’Grady, deputy director for municipal and environmental infrastructure at the EBRD, whose Green Cities Programme is intended to encourage systematic planning at the city level to address environmental chal- lenges. Giving the example of an investment into compressed natural gas buses in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, she explains that “this investment is to try to stop that modal shift to cars, to provide high quality public transport that people are incentivised to use”.
Other issues faced by cities across the EBRD’s region of operations include low en- ergy efficiency, and the lack of well function- ing waste collection and disposal systems and waste water facilities. However, Lin’s colleague Nigel Jollands, senior manager
“The idea is that once we have a track record we will start to expand to other countries”
for policy and climate finance, points out that air quality is often the most pressing and visible problem.
“Air quality would be one of the first driv- ers for a city incentivising them to work with us. It has an immediate impact on people’s health and wellbeing,” he says. In addition to cars, “We know for sure that many of the
running in Tbilisi, Tirana and Yerevan. More GCAPs will be implemented in 2017. “The idea is that once we have a track record we will start to expand to the other countries of operation, and at the moment we are looking seriously at SEMED [the Southern and East- ern Mediterranean region] and Mongolia,” says O’Grady.