W. Balkans needs to add 50 GW of renewables by 2045 – Enervis
Date: May 10th 2022
Author: Montel
Category: En.vision
Topic:
Electricity
, Renewables
, Energy policy
, Economy
, Ecology
To meet its zero emissions target by 2050, the Western Balkans needs to install another 50 GW of wind and solar capacity by 2045, said Rita Kunert from German energy consultancy firm Enervis.
Speaking during an energy conference in Pristina on Tuesday, Kunert added that six Western Balkan countries – Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Montenegro – would have to invest close to EUR 40bn in cleaner energy production by 2050.Kunert, who was presenting a study on the region’s renewables sector, said that power production in the coming decades should be dependent on solar and wind generated energy, which would be “integrated into the system with storage technologies, such as batteries and pumps. There is a small level of gas-based [production] but in 2045 that would be hydrogen-based, which means decarbonised.”
According to the study, the decarbonisation of the Western Balkans’ power sector by 2045 would result in financial savings of between a 3-15% and would cut CO2 emissions in half, or by between 45-51%.
Kunert added that 45% of energy production in the Western Balkans continued to be lignite based in 2022.
All Western Balkan countries combined currently have less than 5 GW of installed capacity from wind and PV and they have to increase that by more than tenfold, she added.
Over the last three years, coal-fired plants in the Western Balkans have emitted six times more SO2 than is permitted and produced over one-and-a-half times more dust pollution, according to a report by the German think tank Agora Energiewende.
Agora Energiewende was the organiser of Tuesday’s energy conference in Pristina along with their local partner Indep.
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