Croatia decided to be the best in Europe when it comes to environmental protection and so it backstabbed itself and provided an investment crash. All EU members need to classify some parts of its territory in this common protected network. Croatia intends to give 37% of its territory to ecologically protected land while other countries give 17%.
There will be no problem, if there are no future HPPs’ locations on these territories, as well as important water flows what means that Croatia cannot build until EU accession in the mid 2016 when EU Commission should verify our proposed ecological network. Croatia cannot launch any HPP construction we won’t be able to regulate our water flows or to work on investments that will provide better protection from floods.
In other words, Croatia marked so many protected areas where we won’t be able to build any new objects in several years completely uncoordinated to Strategy of Spatial Planning of Croatian Republic. When Europe verifies country ecological network, it will be able to interfere in country decisions and to build in our structure.
Economy development won’t be able in even 37% of Croatian land in the moment when Government calls on collective prayer for attracting investors in Croatia. Unfortunately, it is not familiar that any investor will answer our prayers except from maybe Plomin C, considering that we can’t develop any project in HPPs with 800 MW of total installed power and potential electricity production of almost two thousands GWH per year.
Big Croatian companies like Hrvatske vode and others are completely shocked with the plan to give so much of our territory to Nature 2000. If that happens, HPP Ombla will not be constructed, HPPs on Sava, HPP Molva 1 and 2, HPPs Kosinj and Sen. Not one investment of planned 3,2 billion EUR will not be able to be launched. These investments will not just decrease our electricity import for 50%, they would provide better protection from floods, water supply of certain agricultural areas and so on.
This move perfectly replies to Europe which many other countries entered much smarter. EU directives do not obligate how much land or water of EU members must be included in ecological network Nature 2000. We decided to give big territory, the biggest in Europe and so become EU reservation – big EU park.
For example, Great Britain and Denmark declared less than 10% as ecology network, even 17 members declared up to 20% of its territory. France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Romania, Sweden, Czech Republic and other are among them, as well as Austria that declared 15% of its land as ecological network. 22% of land is protected in Hungary, 33% in Bulgaria, 35% in Slovenia and 37% i.e. most in Europe will be protected in Croatia. Moreover, the first proposal was 47%.
Source;Serbia Energy SEE Desk/Croatian Energy association report
