Bosnia and Herzegovina lags far behind in the energy transition, and some believe that the power companies cannot implement it. Economist Damir Miljevic has the same opinion.
Speaking as a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Sustainable Energy Transition ReSET on civil energy, he noted that the production of electricity from solar energy and wind energy is becoming cheaper and simpler.
He pointed out that the concept of civic energy, as part of the energy transition, came to life 20 years ago in Germany. Civic energy implies the existence of prosumers or that each household can simultaneously produce, consume and sell surplus electricity and the existence of energy cooperatives consisting of households, companies and others that simultaneously produce, consume and sell electricity to each other.
Miljevic does not think that the electric power companies are the ones that will carry out the energy transition, that make electricity predominantly produced from renewable energy sources. On the contrary.
“The story that the electric power companies will spend the energy transition is a story of ruin,” he warned and added that this cannot be expected from them, because they want to maintain a monopolistic position.
He claims that there are more and more companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina that build their own power plants, and that this is a consequence of the increase in the price of electricity at domestic power companies. This primarily refers to the production of electricity from solar energy. According to Miljevic, solar power plants with a total capacity of five megawatts have been built in the last six months.
Earlier we wrote about how complex the procedures are for households that want to have a solar power plant. Emphasizing that complexity, Miljevic assessed that the procedures were as if he wanted to build, as he said, a nuclear power plant.
“Solar power plants are treated like all other buildings. They even ask you for a role plan,” he pointed out.
He reminded that the Republika Srpska recently adopted a law which treats the production of electricity from renewable energy sources, and that this has not happened in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina yet. It is not clear to him why the new law in RS retains the obligation for citizens to subsidize private investors by building electricity to build power plants for the production of electricity from renewable energy sources. According to the existing law, this is also the case in FBiH.
He referred to how the neighboring countries stimulate the development of civic energy, ie. prosume concept. He singled out the example of Serbia and Montenegro. As he said, in Serbia, prosumer becomes in only three steps – the state subsidizes 50 percent of the costs of building a solar power plant.
He pointed out that the Electric Power Industry of Montenegro had a program for 3,000 households and 500 companies. He implied that the electricity distributor fully financed the construction of the solar power plant, and that money was later paid through bills. Miljevic emphasized that this project was very successful and that is why they decided to increase the number of those who will receive financial support.
In Croatia, the installation of solar panels has been subsidized for several years with 40 to 80 percent of the total amount of installation or up to 75,000 kuna (19,500 KM), Slobodna Bosna writes.
