City of Gaziantep unveils climate change action plan
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it is supporting the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep in an ambitious set of policies to tackle climate change by cutting emissions by 20% by 2023. The plan for dramatic improvement in the environment is laid out in a comprehensive document launched by deputy mayor Latif […]
Health costs of coal plants prompt policy rethink
A study quantified public health costs of polluted air from coal-fired power plants in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo* at up to EUR 8.56 billion per year. The calculation is made up of costs including from premature deaths, respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions, new cases of chronic bronchitis and lower respiratory problems, […]
EBRD helps policy reform to stimulate energy efficiency
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development sees large opportunities for savings in public budgets in the improvement of efficiency of municipal lighting, says Daniel Berg, the international financing institution’s director in Serbia. He told Balkan Green Energy News the bank is providing technical cooperation to a number of municipalities and hopes to finance investment […]
Draft law produced on cut in greenhouse gas emissions
Minister of agriculture and environmental protection Snežana Bogosavljević Bošković said obligatory monitoring and reporting on industrial emissions of greenhouse gases is included in the new bill on the reduction of emissions. The draft law was created within a project from 2012 funded by the European Union through Instruments for Pre-Accession. The bill, planned for adoption in […]
Balkan countries must manage floods, droughts together
There are cooperation and communication mechanisms missing between neighboring countries, in order to take into account the transboundary nature of flood and drought risk at operational level, says Jelena Peruničić, Senior Manager at the regional German Development Cooperation (GIZ) project Climate Change Adaptation in Western Balkans (CCAWB). There is much to be done at the local […]
EC’s contracting parties to cap pollution from plants
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Macedonia, Serbia and Ukraine submitted national emission reduction plans (NERPs) to the Energy Community (EC) Secretariat by the deadline of end-2015. This marks a highly important milestone in preparing for the implementation of the Large Combustion Plants Directive (as amended by Decision 2013/05/MC-EnC of the Ministerial Council), which is to commence […]
The big green challenge: can we change fast enough?
By Maja Turković, Energy Consultant, co-author of the CIRSD study ’A Roadmap for Deploying Renewable Energy Sources in Serbia and the Regional Perspective’ Fossil fuels have been harnessed as an abundant and easily accessible source of energy for two centuries. This cheap energy enabled the growth of populations and consumption levels; and facilitated technological innovations […]
UNDP publishes country snapshots on climate change
By Christoph S. Henrich, Sustainable Energy Consultant, Istanbul Regional Hub, United Nations Development Programme in Europe and Central Asia E-mail: christoph.henrich@undp.org One problem of the international climate change debate is that the information presented in technical documents, such as in national communications that are submitted by parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), […]