Green Action activists, in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, held a protest action today at 11 a.m. in front of the Ministry of Construction and Spatial Planning pointing out that the process of Environmental Impact Assessment for the third block of the coal power-plant Plomin has been turned into a farce.
It is a devastating fact that the new government does not have any new projects in the energy sector, instead opting to realize old projects, started by the former government. One such project is the so-called “Plomin C plant”, in which case the licencing process has been turned into a sham, so as to make the investment, which is in clear violation with existing spatial plans, possible. The Spatial Plan of Istra County states that the third block of the Plomin plant must be gas-powered and that its maximum power should not exceed 125 MW. Contrary to that, the EIA ordered by HEP, and conducted by Ekonerg, envisioned a coal-powered plant with a total power of 500 MW. On today’s action we visually demonstrated this incompatibility – we had two columns; one 4.5 meters high, which represents the planned 500 MW coal plant, and another, smaller column, which represented a 125 MW gas-powered plant.
The situation in which the First Vice-President of the Government, who is also president of the political party which controls the Ministry of Construction and Spatial Planning, announces that “Plomin is going ahead”, even though the EIA has not yet been accepted, confirms that this is a case of malicious circumvention of the process, because of which we will seek justice at the Administrative Court, should the EIA be accepted.
Also, it states in the Croatian Spatial Planning Program that “Until the year 2015 no thermal power-plant fuelled by coal, nor nuclear power, shall be built nor possibilities for it investigated in Croatia”. The planned coal power-plant is in direct opposition to this.
Over two months ago we sent a request to the Ministry of Construction and Spatial Planning for a formal interpretation whether the planned coal plant is in accord with the Spatial Plan of Istra County and the above quoted excerpt from the Croatian Spatial Planning Program. Last week we received an answer which shocked us with its superficial argumentation in an attempt to justify the obvious discrepancies of this project with the Spatial Plan of Istra County.
We are convinced that only speculative capital can invest into a project that is this inconsistent with the Spatial Plan. We would like to remind you that the German company RWE, one of the Europe’s leading producers of electrical energy, which is co-owner of Plomin 2, recently stated that they are not interested in investing into the block of the Plomin plant.
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