Green Action activists, in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, held a protest performance today at 12 p.m. in front of the Ministry of Environmental and Nature Protection, asking Minister Zmajlović to reject the EIA for the Plomin C coal plant.
Last week, the Committee of the Ministry, with majority vote, gave a positive opinion about the project under, what we believe, great pressure from the First Vice-President of the Government, Radimir Čačić, who prejudiced the decision several days earlier by publicly stating that “Plomin is going ahead”, despite the obvious short-comings of the EIA.
Considering that the opinion of the Committee was given under pressure, we ask the Ministry not to act according to the opinion, but to ignore it and reject this harmful, and, by all accounts, illegal project. Should the Ministry publish a Decision concerning the acceptability of the environmental intervention, we will be forced to start an administrative dispute because of the evident discrepancies of the intervention with the existing Spatial Plan.
As we have emphasised several times, the Spatial Plan of Istra County states that the third block of the Plomin plant must use gas as fuel, and should be no more than 125 MW. Contrary to this, the EIA ordered by HEP, and preformed by Ekonerg, talked about a 500 MW plant fuelled by coal. Apart from that, the Croatian Spatial Planning Program states 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”.
Due to the changing prices of coal on the global market, it is not likely that good quality coal will be available for a reasonable price during the entire life-span of the plant. Also, the “Roadmap for moving to a competitive low carbon economy in 2050”, a document of the European Commission, foresees a reduction in CO2 emissions by 80 to 95 % on the EU level by the year 2050 along with a total decarbonisation of the energy sector. In compliance with this, in the year 2050 the part of Plomin C in Croatia’s total emission would range from 40% up to 100% above the allowed norm. Should Croatia build the coal power-plant we will have to either pay penalties for not meeting our reduction goals or close down the plant sooner, which would cause great financial loss.
Because of this the activists in the performance were chained to a large piece of coal, showing that, should Croatia build Plomin C, it will be energetically dependant and chained to imported coal.
Minister Zmajlović invited us for a meeting after the performance, where we explained to him why this project is unacceptable.
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