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Balkans
Bosnia, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia did not comply with the ceilings both in 2018 and 2019. The Secretariat launched a dispute settlement procedure in March. Ukraine, although being on the top of all polluter lists, interestingly met all emission ceilings for all three pollutants by a large margin.
Another implementation alternative under the LCPD, known as “opt-out”, provides an exemption to national NERCP ceiling calculations if plants commit to operate less than 20,000 operational hours between 2018-2023.
Kosova e Re coal-fired power plant project, estimated to cost €1.3bn. ContourGlobal said it planned to sue Kosovo because as a result of the political situation in the country, the power plant project was incapable of reaching its required milestones by the required project completion date in May 2020, so the project could not proceed.
Aside from Albania, which produces almost all its energy from hydropower, according to the Energy Community, North Macedonia is the only country in the Western Balkans that has expressed its intent to gradually phase out coal. "Bosnia
& Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia are moving on with their plans to refurbish existing coal-fired capacities or even commission new capacities before 2030," the Energy Community said in February, adding that if these plans are realised the level of coal-fired generation capacities will expand by 1.5 GW by 2030.
Russia
Russia ratified the Paris Climate Accord on September 23, committing itself to reducing CO2 emissions to 70% of
the 1990 levels. But that is an easy goal, as Russia’s CO2 emissions peaked in the last year of the Soviet Union and
the following year emissions collapsed along with the Soviet economy. Russia’s commitment means it can actually increase its emissions from the current 1.8Gt of CO2 emissions per year and still meet its commitments to the accord, as bne IntelliNews reported in “The cost of carbon in Russia” in September 2019.
Thanks to the legacy of central planning it is also one of the biggest polluters in the world. With a territory that stretches half way around the globe, the Soviet government acted as if Russia’s ecology was an infinite resource. But global warming has caught up even with Russia, as the permafrost is melting that could cause as much as $1 trillion of damage to cities and infrastructure in the interior. In the last year the Kremlin has done a sharp about-face from scoffing at the problem to acting.
In April the Kremlin launched a pilot carbon pricing project on the Far East island of Sakhalin and proposed imposing fines of RUB150-2,000 ($2-25) per tonne on companies that exceed proposed new GHG emissions quotas.
Coal-fired power plants will be replaced with somewhat cleaner natural gas and hydrogen-fuelled passenger train
lines developed in the region the size of Ireland, Sakhalin officials said, after their net-zero carbon by 2025 roadmap was approved by Moscow in February. About 97% of all coal mined there is currently exported, and coal could remain a reserve fuel for Sakhalin, if technologies were introduced to make the industry cleaner, according to the regional governor.
Russia has the second-largest coal reserves in the world, equalling 19% of the world's total. The total coal reserves in Russia amount to 173bn tonnes. This puts Russia behind the United States in total coal reserves, which has 263bn tonnes.
Serbia says it targets 40% renewables in its energy mix, but for the moment remains heavily dependent on coal and it
has been building new coal capacity. Minister of Energy and Mining Zorana Mihaljovic has put increased emphasis on the energy transition since her appointment in 2020, though this is a politically sensitive issue. Major new coal power stations Kolubara 2 and Kostolac B3 have been under construction, but in May 2021 the government announced that work on Kolubara 2 has been suspended for reasons that are as yet unclear. Kostolac B3 has also run into difficulties as Mihaljović criticised both the speed and the quality of work by China Machinery Engineering Corporation.
Bosnia faces similar issues, and the Bosnian Federation is currently embroiled in a dispute with the Energy Community secretariat over alleged state aid for the construction of the Tuzla 7 coal-fired power plant. There are several projects to build coal power plants in Bosnia, at various stages of development, but it is not clear how many are economically viable.
Montenegro dropped plans for a new unit at the Pljevlja thermal power plant (TPP), opting instead to extend the life of the existing unit. Power company EPCG says it needs to continue operating Pljevlja, as shutting down the power plant will be too costly.
Kosovo planned to add a major new coal power plant, to
be built by US company ContourGlobal, However, last year ContourGlobal announced its decision to cancel the 500-MW
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