We have devel­oped an ana­lyt­ic plat­form to ana­lyze the elec­tric­i­ty options, costs, and impacts for Koso­vo, a nation that is a crit­i­cal part of the debate over cen­tral­ized ver­sus dis­trib­uted elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion and the role of fos­sil fuels ver­sus clean­er elec­tric­i­ty options to meet grow­ing demands for pow­er. We find that a range of alter­na­tives exists to meet present sup­ply con­straints all at a low­er cost than con­struct­ing a pro­posed 600 MW coal plant. The options include ener­gy effi­cien­cy mea­sures, com­bi­na­tions of solar PV, wind, hydropow­er, and bio­mass, and the intro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas. A 30 EUR ton–1 shad­ow price on CO2 increas­es costs of coal gen­er­a­tion by at least 330 mil­lion EUR. The results indi­cate that financ­ing a new coal plant is the most expen­sive path­way to meet future elec­tric­i­ty demand.