The law on the use of renewable energy sources in Serbia, which was adopted in 2021, according to Danijela Isailović, director of the Renewable Energy Sources Association, was only good on paper and could not be implemented.
According to her, fantastic developments have recently taken place because amendments to that law were adopted, and a few days ago bylaws and finally the first auctions for 400 megawatts of wind power plants and 50 megawatts of solar power plants were announced.
“This indicates that in the next 4-5 years, they will certainly have 450 new power plants from renewable energy sources. In order for this to be massive, it is necessary to invest in infrastructure, in the transmission system of electricity, in the distribution system of electricity, in balancing, storage” , said Isailović.
These, he adds, are some of the challenges that investors and the state must face together.
“Like the slogan of our association ‘Synergy of renewable energy sources’, it is a job where one cannot do it alone, the state cannot do everything alone, the investor cannot do it alone. There must be a common interest, to have more green of energy, for it to be good for the state as well, for it to have a stable power system, and finally for investors to know why they came, which is to realize some interest here and to have operational capacities,” says Isailović.
Asked about estimates of how many years it will take for Serbia to get to the point where it gets most of its electricity from renewable energy sources, Isailović stated that there are projections and desires, but also targets.
“For us, the Energy Community, just as it set for 2020 that we have 27 percent of the electricity we get from renewable sources, so for 2030 it set a target of even some 40 percent, which is quite ambitious. Our country, the ministry and the Government will try to adapt those goals in a document called the Integrated National Plan for Climate and Energy. I hope that document will be adopted by the parliament by the end of the year and let’s see what our targets are for 2030. They will certainly be above 35 percent, which indicates that “somewhere in 2050, that’s the year when the whole world is moving towards decarbonization, so that we can hope to have at least 50 percent of our electricity from renewable energy sources. Of course, hydro potential is leading there, followed by wind and solar,” said Isailović.
What about the production of electricity from biomass?
Isailović says that, according to the national strategy from 2013, biomass is presented as the greatest potential and that more than half of our green energy potential lies in biomass.
However, she stated that it was not used.
“It is an industry that has been facing major problems in recent years, bearing in mind that biomass is an energy source that needs to be produced, that someone needs to collect, some logistics are needed, some people are needed, and how there has been a general increase in prices, inflation, from colleagues who deal with biomass and biogas, I hear that it is not a profitable business. In the coming period, I do not expect significant changes in terms of the percentage of obtaining electricity from biomass,” Isailović said.
Sign up for business updates & specials.
