Slovenia must be more ambitious to achieve the green transition
On the decarbonisation of Europe
What does the Recovery and Resilience Fund cover?
The European Commission made available an amount of 723.8 billion euros
to fight the consequences of the corona crisis and make Europe greener, cleaner and ready for the future. All Member States have the opportunity to submit plans for disbursement from this Recovery and Resilience Fund.
Who participates in the Recovery and Resilience Fund?
All member states of the European Union. All member states? No, the Netherlands has not yet submitted plans. Although it became clear at the end of January that hard work was being done behind the scenes in the Netherlands to secure some of those European billions.
What do Member States have to spend the money on?
At least 37 percent of the funds should be earmarked for greater sustainability of their countries and 20 percent for digitization. In addition, there are other key points:
– Smart, sustainable and inclusive growth
– Social and territorial cohesion
– Public health, economic, social and institutional resilience
– Policy for future generations
In addition, EC identified several ti leading areas:
– Turn it on
– Renovate
– Refueling and refueling
– Get connected
– Please update
– Increase in size
– Re-skill and upgrade
What does Innovation Origins intend to do?
In the coming months, we will focus on implementing these plans. We will describe what each country is doing to reduce CO₂ emissions and report on innovative projects. The infographic will allow you to compare the efforts of the member states.
A crisis like the corona pandemic calls for decisive action. The EU relaxed 723.8 billion euros in an effort to pull the European economy out of the corona-induced recession with the help of the Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF). To be eligible for a share of this big bag of money, member states must submit a plan to the European Commission. In the Decarbonising Europe series, we put these plans under the magnifying glass.
Slovenia’s position between the Balkans and the center of Europe is a strategic position within the EU scenario. The country is covered by thousands of hectares of forest – about two-thirds of its land area – making it a major advantage of the green transition. Biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration can go hand in hand.
The European Commission approved the 2.5 billion euro Slovenian Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP). About 700 million euros of this budget are loans. How will the plan help the country in its green transition?
According to Jonas Sonnenschein, project manager at It’s mind-blowing – Slovenian Foundation for Sustainable Development – the plan does not tackle the energy transition as much as it should. “Renewable energy sources do not receive enough attention in the Slovenian RRP. Apart from the investment in the hydroelectric power plant – which probably won’t even be built because it is located in a protected area – the plan does not include any other significant renewable electricity projects.”
Another key point that the plan leaves out concerns the network itself. “Although there are no problems with the high-voltage network, the capacity of the distribution network needs to be improved,” emphasizes Sonnenschein.
Almost no wind power and very little solar power
If we look at the numbers from International Energy Agency – IEA – nuclear power, hydropower and coal are the main three sources of electricity. Solar and wind energy accounted for only 2 percent. In particular, wind farms are difficult to set up in Slovenia. More than a third of the territory of Slovenia falls under Natura 2000 protection scheme. In addition, there are only a few areas with good wind potential.
European Parlament report stressed that in order to achieve the goal of a 27% share of renewable energy by 2030, the key sources will be the sun, wind and wood biomass.
“Biomass will not play a major role in the production of electricity. Currently, wood biomass is largely used for heating, especially in rural areas. It is the main cause of air pollution there. However, there are some examples of good practices. For example, small district heating systems with good filtration systems can use local biomass. At the same time, they drastically reduce air pollution. But it remains to be seen whether such systems will be attractive enough to surpass the combination of solar energy and heat pumps.”
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“The first minor heat wave is now behind us and the cooling system worked extremely well,” enthuses Antoine Post. When we spoke to him at the beginning of the year, he was still adjusting to life in his own experiment. Meanwhile, it is completely at home in CASA 1.0
Economic and pollution burden
IEA data shows that coal produced about 20 percent of the country’s electricity in 2020. Last year, the Slovenian government announced that it would abandon coal by 2033. Block six Elektrarne Šoštanj is the main coal-fired power plant in the country. The report analyzed different scenarios for the plant up to 2030 and predicted that the plant could generate losses of up to EUR 830 million. This is due to high CO2 fuel prices and costs. According to the analysis, the plant could be shut down before the original deadline.
NextGeneration EU
The corona crisis is one of the biggest challenges of our time. European Union, through NextGenerationEU – the biggest economic recovery plan ever, worth €806.9 billion – aims to help its member states come out of the crisis stronger. The A tool for recovery and resilience (RRF) is at the heart of this plan (EUR 723.8 billion).
The RRF has two goals: first, to pull the European economy out of the recession caused by the corona pandemic. At the same time, it is designed to give impetus to important investments for the future and measures to introduce reforms.
The original deadline for submitting the plan was April 30, 2021, but that deadline has since been pushed back to June 2022. It is currently 26 out of 27 member states submitted a plan. The plans require member states to spend at least 37 percent of their budgets on climate action and 20 percent on digitization.
strategies
Since the appointment of the new government led by Prime Minister Robert Golob, a turnaround in energy policy is expected. Golob used to be the president – and co-founder – of the state watchdog GEN-I – an energy trading company. According to the head of the Umanotera project, this could change the approach to energy supply.
He participated in writing the Green Recovery Tracker report for Slovenia.
Sonnenschein: “He is an expert in energy trading and has a very clear plan when it comes to solar development. I am more optimistic about this than I was a few years ago. But there is still one elephant in the room, nuclear power.”
Slovenia shares the Krško power plant with Croatia. It is the only reactor in the country that produced 36 percent of the country’s own electricity in 2019. The factory will be closed in 2043 at the latest, and in the meantime there are talks about building a new one. “They will certainly have to come to a referendum, spatial planning procedures, assessment of cross-border impacts and so on. At the moment, I don’t see how new nuclear energy can make a significant contribution to short- to medium-term decarbonisation,” adds the climate expert.
Not enough green consumption
Green recovery tracker report for Slovenia – wrote E3Gthe Wuppertal Institute, and Umanotera – made their own calculations of the share of green expenditures in the Slovenian RRP. The analysis showed that only 21% of the budget is dedicated to green goals. This is much less than the 37% set by the European Commission.
What’s more, the plan even includes potentially harmful investments, such as financing natural gas bottling plants. “The purpose of the second investment is to improve the productivity of SMEs and reduce their impact on the climate. Of course, this could be a good idea, but the first tenders published in this investment section are very disappointing. They only require a 10% improvement in energy efficiency,” emphasizes Sonnenschein.
Energy efficiency and green mobility are at the heart of Czech plans
Czech is not exactly the cleanest kid in the class. In order to achieve the EU’s climate goals, it is necessary to reduce the heavy dependence on coal and increase the share of renewable energy. However, since green energy accounts for fifteen percent of the country’s energy consumption, this figure is still very low.
In general, the researcher has some reservations about the implementation of some of the initiatives included in the plan, as well as the actual layout of the projects. “The description of several investments in the Slovenian RRP sounds quite green, but their actual contribution to decarbonisation will depend on their concrete implementation, which we will critically monitor and evaluate. Furthermore, RRP is only a small piece of the decarbonisation puzzle. Other sources of financing and complementary political instruments, such as regulation and taxation, will have to be directed towards carbon neutrality,” summarizes the climate expert.
In the picture, the turbogenerator of the Krško power plant