by Majlinda Daci (ELP 2019) | Full Professor at Department of Chemistry, FMNS, University of Prishtina
As a young girl, being a daughter of a chemist and an environmentalist, I had a privilege of visiting the Department of Chemistry, FMNS at the University of Pristina very often. I was amazed by everything that was going on in my father’s lab. I was once present when he was reading some results from water samples that were taken in some strategic points in Kosovo, and he was quite disappointed. When I asked him what was going on, he just said that the rivers are being constantly polluted from burning off so much coal for electricity.
Twenty years later I was at the same lab working with my team and feeling even more disappointed than my dad was. The results from the water sample analysis from the Sitnica river were devastating. Although we were using coal ash as an adsorbent for organic and inorganic pollutants and had great results, rivers were so polluted that we simply had to do something to try to remediate the source of the pollution because trying only to remove that big pile of coal ash that was created from years of burning coal simply was not enough.
Kosovo currently has two power stations located in Obiliq, Kosovo A Power Station and Kosovo B Power Station. The former is a 610-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power station, consisting of five units built in 1962 and 1975. The latter is a 680-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power station comprised of two 340 MW units commissioned in 1983 to 1984. Kosovo A was to be closed in 2017, but the closure has yet to happen due to a lack of replacement. Kosovo was told that it needs to phase the energy source out, after decades of relying on lignite and despite having 14 billion tonnes of reserves, being the fifth-largest in the world. Kosovo's government (also based on a five-part U.S. State Department strategy for Kosovo) made plans to reform its energy sector by building a new 500-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power station, also known as Kosovo C.
The World Bank recognised that “river basins in Kosovo are all moderately or heavily polluted” and made it official to the Kosovo Government that they “will consider a partial guarantee for the risk from the construction of the new lignite-based power plant, Kosova C, to replace the scheduled decommissioning of the 60 era lignite-based Kosovo A facility”. Over 90% of Kosovo’s electricity generation currently relies on lignite coal, and although it has the lowest quality and calorific value of all coal types, its local abundance explains its continued use. Kosova C is foreseen to be implemented in Obiliq, in the same area where Kosova A and Kosova B power plants already are operating and will also continue to use lignite coal as a fuel source and apparently would improve efficiency with newly available technology. This area is only 7 km from Kosovo’s capital, Prishtina, and the consequences of burning coal for power generation directly affects the lives of people that live nearby and those of more than 500,000 inhabitants of the capital.
The usage of lignite for the needs of both existing power plants and technological treatment in this area turned Obiliq and surrounding villages into the most polluted areas in Europe. According to the Kosovo Agency for Environmental Protection, these power stations pollute the areas up to 30 kilometres away from their locations. Since this pollution is comprehensive it also affected not only surface and ground waters but also agricultural land and air. Furthermore, since the communities living in the polluted area consist of nearly 60% farmers, flocks of animals were also affected by the pollution as they rely on the river and groundwaters. However, all this pollution has its greatest impact on health as the release of various pollutants to the environment such as smoke, sulphide oxides, nitrogen oxides, arsenic, mercury and others, has a direct impact on the increasing incidence of cardiovascular, pulmonary, cognitive, and neural diseases among our communities.
Prof. Dan Kammen, from UC Berkeley, analysed pre-combusted coal in Kosovo and published a paper on the Kosovo case declaring that “The trace metals found in pre-combusted lignite coal in Kosovo are only one aspect of the overall public health threat. Coal-fired power plants release a variety of pollutants: particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals and radionuclides—that in this case will likely contribute to thousands of premature deaths in Kosovo over the next decade. For this reason, stakeholders should prioritize sustainable energy scenarios that reduce dependence on coal.”They also concluded that it would be cheaper to use renewables, solar PV, natural gas, wind, and hydro than to build a new power plant that would continue to use coal. Even if they would use all the newest clean technology it will still have an environment and health impact. Not long after, Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank announced that “We have made a very firm decision not to go forward with the coal power plant, because we’re required by our bylaws to go with the lowest-cost option, and renewables have now come below the cost of coal. So without question, we’re not going to do that.”
In this case, the impact of research on decision making is evident, and this truly gave me hope that political decisions will someday indeed be made also on the basis of scientific results. However, unfortunately, there are setbacks. Kosovo authorities signed a contract with US company Contour Global to build a new coal-based 500 MW unit, which then announced that it had chosen a consortium of General Electric subsidiaries to help build Kosovo C.
As I reflect on this, I recall an Albanian saying, “Shpresa vdes e fundit,” which literally means that “Hope dies last.” I am reminded to take a long view, to see the setbacks as temporary, and to keep hope alive.
Figure 1. Thermo power station Kosovo A with 610 MWh (when it was first built, it was the biggest of its kind in the Balkans) and Kosovo B with 678 MWh. Photo credit Liburn