NEWS Kosovo’s Battle for Clean Air and EnergySeptember 1, 2015

From the Huff­in­g­ton Post:

Last year, $28 bil­lion was col­lec­tive­ly spent on cli­mate finance from six large mul­ti­lat­er­al devel­op­ment banks (MDBs). That’s no small feat, but 2,100 new coal plants slat­ed for con­struc­tion world­wide threat­en to push us over our glob­al 2°C car­bon bud­get: 276 gigawatts are cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion and anoth­er 1,000 gigawatts are in dif­fer­ent plan­ning stages. These are num­bers that should elic­it addi­tion­al ener­gy invest­ment scrutiny.

The World Bank serves as an ever-impor­tant actor at the inter­sec­tion of devel­op­ment pol­i­cy and invest­ment, and will con­tin­ue to play a crit­i­cal role in exe­cut­ing clean ener­gy strate­gies in the least resource-rich regions of the world. How­ev­er, a par­tic­u­lar pro­pos­al for a 600-megawatt coal-fired plant in Koso­vo chal­lenges the World Bank’s broad­er objec­tive to finance low-emis­sions ener­gy devel­op­ment and may result as one of the “rare excep­tions” to its pledge to stop fund­ing new coal projects overseas.

A pend­ing deci­sion to fund this coal-fired plant in Koso­vo is gen­er­at­ing intense debate. The Koso­vo C plant in ques­tion would be the third lig­nite coal plant in a coun­try that pro­duces approx­i­mate­ly 98 per­cent of its ener­gy capac­i­ty from coal. This is cause for con­cern. Accord­ing to a 2012 World Bank report, air pol­lu­tion in Koso­vo caus­es 835 pre­ma­ture deaths, 310 new cas­es of chron­ic bron­chi­tis, 600 hos­pi­tal admis­sions and 11,600 emer­gency vis­its each year. And while the Koso­vo C project has stag­nat­ed for over a decade — accru­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in sunk costs — it is now under­go­ing its final envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment, and the World Bank will like­ly vote on whether to autho­rize the project in fall 2015.

Local envi­ron­men­tal advo­ca­cy groups like Kosovo’s Civ­il Soci­ety Con­sor­tium for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (KOSID) and inter­na­tion­al groups like the Sier­ra Club are advo­cat­ing for clean­er, cheap­er ener­gy alter­na­tives to the pro­posed plant. These groups point out that the pro­posed Koso­vo C plant fails to com­ply with the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion’s Cli­mate Action Plan. More­over, the Sier­ra Club states in a reportthat the World Bank’s “expert pan­el failed to ade­quate­ly address sev­er­al areas of non-com­pli­ance with the Strate­gic Frame­work for Devel­op­ment and Cli­mate Change (SFDCC) cri­te­ria. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Koso­vo Pow­er Project does not meet the SFDCC cri­te­ria with respect to: devel­op­ment impact; assis­tance for low-car­bon alter­na­tives; assess­ment of effi­cien­cy options; assess­ment of exter­nal­ized costs; and poten­tial sup­port for incre­men­tal costs.”

The World Bank’s pro­posed coal-fired pow­er plant also com­pli­cates Kosovo’s future as a poten­tial mem­ber state of the Euro­pean Union. This is because the coun­try would strug­gle to meet ever-increas­ing EU renew­able ener­gy stan­dards. At this stage, it is fair to ques­tion what it will take for Koso­vo and the World Bank to reach an inflec­tion point and con­sid­er more eco­nom­i­cal alter­na­tives to coal.

Mov­ing Koso­vo Towards a Low Car­bon Economy

For the past four years, the World Bank has eschewed invest­ments in new coal facil­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, which is unequiv­o­cal­ly a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment. How­ev­er, the pro­posed brown-coal fired plant uses one of the low­est grades of com­bustible rock, pro­duc­ing more car­bon diox­ide emis­sions and volatile mat­ter than any oth­er grade. In addi­tion, it would be locat­ed only six miles from Pristi­na, Kosovo’s most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed city. In this light, the Koso­vo C Plant threat­ens to roll back recent gains the World Bank has made in its com­mit­ment to financ­ing clean­er energy.

I vis­it­ed Pristi­na in 2012, and it was clear then that the pub­lic health threats are real. Reck­on­ing with the thick fetor of coal and the feel­ing of inhal­ing dilut­ed soot when walk­ing around town was an unfa­mil­iar chal­lenge. At the end of my trip, I had the lux­u­ry of being able to leave the city, but for the 198,000 res­i­dents who live in Pristi­na, long-term expo­sure to par­tic­u­late mat­ter build up is an every­day reality.

Back in Cal­i­for­nia, a region with the some of strictest air qual­i­ty require­ments, Dr. Daniel Kam­men, a UC Berke­ley pro­fes­sor and for­mer World Bank clean ener­gy con­sul­tant, makes the case for adopt­ing clean ener­gy in Koso­vo. In each sce­nario that his team mod­eled, they found that coal is more expen­sive to pro­duce in the region than an amal­ga­ma­tion of renew­able ener­gy sources, such as: wind, solar, bio­mass, hydropow­er and poten­tial­ly geot­her­mal ener­gy. “While the Koso­vo sto­ry itself is sig­nif­i­cant, all of the nations in this part of East­ern Europe are deal­ing with 1950’s Sovi­et era tech­nolo­gies and are seen by some as a region of lag­gards, but real­ly this could be a region of clean ener­gy lead­ers,” said Dr. Kam­men, as he addressed an audi­ence of aca­d­e­mics and pro­fes­sion­als at an event in Feb­ru­ary. Right now, Koso­vo sits astride vast poten­tials for alter­na­tive ener­gy sources; it’s just a mat­ter of tak­ing the first step.

Ten years ago, coal was the most afford­able resource used to cre­ate ener­gy secu­ri­ty for Koso­vars, which may be why the World Bank first con­sid­ered the Koso­vo C coal plant. Today, Koso­vo has access to cost-effec­tive clean ener­gy alter­na­tives that both address ener­gy secu­ri­ty and cre­ate new vehi­cles of eco­nom­ic growth in the face of cli­mate change. With the aver­age coal-fired pow­er plant last­ing up to 50 years and caus­ing an array of local envi­ron­men­tal and human health issues, I hope this isn’t the ener­gy lega­cy the World Bank wants to leave behind in Kosovo.