In order to achieve the goals proclaimed by the Green Agenda, which envisages that Serbia will produce 40% of electricity and heat from renewable sources by 2040, the authorities are announcing new investments in the domestic energy sector, but if we analyze how far we have come so far, it is difficult to expect that the announced can be realized by the set deadline.
During her stay in Warsaw, where she participated in the meeting of the Partnership for Transatlantic Energy and Climate Cooperation, Zorana Mihajlovic, Minister of Mining and Energy of Serbia, pointed out that our country provided 17 billion euros for projects in the new investment cycle, of which more than five billion for RES..
These investments should help realize the officially proclaimed plans for Serbia to receive 40 percent of electricity and heat from renewable sources by 2040, and for 10 years later the largest part of production to be from “green kilowatts”.
When it comes to fulfilling that task, it can be stated that Serbia is already lagging behind the countries of the European Union, and judging by the opinion of the domestic expert public, it is too ambitious to believe that the proclaimed can be achieved within the set deadlines.
Namely, while Serbia plans to get 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2040, the European Union wants to raise the share of green energy by 2030 from the previously planned 32 percent to 40 percent.
By 2050, Serbia intends to get more than 50 percent of its energy from RES, and the countries of the European Union plan to completely eliminate coal production by then and to get electricity from renewable sources and nuclear power plants.
Some countries, such as Germany, plan to abandon fossil fuels by 2040. On the other hand, although it is difficult for Serbia to get most of the electricity from RES in 2050, the authorities in our country still do not know in what percentage the electricity obtained from coal will be produced then. The work plan of the existing thermal power plants until 2050 will be determined by a council that will be formed at the level of the Government, in which, in addition to the representatives of the line ministries, there will also be representatives of the Electric Power Industry of Serbia and the EPS union.
At the moment, only about 30 percent of electricity in Serbia is produced from renewable sources, mostly thanks to hydroelectric power plants, from which 24.5 percent was obtained. The percentage of electricity from other RES is almost completely negligible according to statistics.
For example, last year, 2.7 percent of electricity was produced from wind farms, 0.87 percent from small hydropower plants, 0.04 percent from solar panels and 1.45 percent from other RES. Serbia produces the most electricity from thermal power plants, and in 2020, that percentage was 69.85 percent.
According to such data, it is understandable that the profession is skeptical about the statements of Serbian officials that the share of produced electricity and heat in Serbia will reach at least 40% by 2040, and that in 2050 most of the electricity in our country will be produced from renewable sources.
In the European Union, on the other hand, renewable sources overtook fossil fuels last year in the share of electricity production with a percentage of 38 percent. The share of fossil fuels was at the level of 37 percent, while the rest of the electricity was produced in nuclear power plants.
How much the EU countries are ahead of Serbia in the use of renewable sources is shown by the data that the electricity produced from wind and solar made 20% of the total production last year. The largest shares were recorded in Denmark 61 percent, Ireland 35 percent, Germany 33 percent and Spain 29 percent.
Economist Milan R. Kovacevic says that the main obstacle in meeting the set goals in the construction of renewable energy sources is that there is no clear strategic plan which projects are a priority and the lack of state engagement in promoting the implementation of the green agenda.
It is unlikely that what is planned regarding the development of renewable sources will be realized if the story about the construction of the national stadium continues. Simply, the authorities can never come up with a clear plan of what and how to build in Serbia. Very little has been done so far on the construction of renewable sources. In order to get better, it is necessary to decide to a greater extent for the installation of solar panels, and for that process it is necessary for the state to be more involved in it in order to provide conditions to accelerate and implement it as soon as possible – says our interlocutor.
Architect Mahmud Bushatlija points out that the process of switching to renewable sources has stopped in the countries of the European Union because they are facing a shortage of gas.
That is why Germany is thinking about further production of electricity on coal, but also because the production of electricity from solar and wind farms has raised its price. Accordingly, the process of increasing the electricity produced from green kilowatts in Serbia cannot be expected to be fast. It is illusory to talk about achieving the planned goals in the production of renewable sources, without any serious plan to build a new large hydropower plant. Only the construction of large hydro capacities could ensure that the plans of the authorities on production from renewable sources are realized – Bushatlija believes.
Velimir Gavrilovic, General Manager of the company “Energia gas and power”, points out that the authorities in Serbia interpret that the existing hydroelectric power plants, from which 30 percent of the electricity is obtained, are also renewable energy sources.
When you immerse a large amount of organic matter in an accumulation lake, it rots and produces greenhouse gases. The question is whether this can then be considered a renewable source at all. If we take into account the private investments in wind farms financed by the citizens of Serbia through high feed-in tariffs for that electricity, we really need a little more investment up to the planned 40 percent. But of course only if we take into account that the old large hydroelectric power plants are renewable sources and they actually lead to pollution, as already explained – our interlocutor states. He adds that the problem is that the Electric Power Industry of Serbia has not done anything in the past 10 years to invest in renewable sources, but that is why it is investing in the thermal power plant in Kostolac “in order to burn bad lignite and pollute the environment,” Danas reports.
