Union of energy workers: The gas power plant carries risks
The construction of a new gas-fired power plant will not bring Serbia closer to achieving climate goals and carries risks of supply and unpredictable costs, said Ilija Batas Bjelic, a member of the Board of Directors of the Energy Association.
“Gas will help us reach climate goals, just as an air conditioner will help you prevent climate change,” said Batas Bjelic for the Zelena Srbija portal of the Beta news agency.
Although relatively low specific investment costs, high efficiency and low gas prices are discussed in relation to the gas power plant, Batas Bjelic points out that its profitability is questionable.
“These are long-term contracts in which you are always exposed to supply risks and unpredictable costs. See how heating prices are rising in heating plants that are mainly gas-fired. Furthermore, the number of working hours that these power plants can achieve in practice is not large, so the profitability is not as good as on paper,” said Batas Bjelic.
He pointed out that the most profitable solutions are those where the investment is acceptable, but the price of fuel is zero, and these are renewable sources.
The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, said this week during the COP29 UN Climate Conference in Baku that he and the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, discussed the construction of a gas power plant near Nis, the power of which could be one gigawatt.
“There we also heard the idea that the gas power plant is being built because of renewable sources, but that is another unnecessary misconception, especially if we have already designed these large power plants as ‘self-balancing’,” said Batas Bjelic regarding the allegation that the power plant could serve for balancing the current obtained in solar power plants.
Introduce renewable sources
As a signatory of the Sofia Declaration on the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans, Serbia committed itself to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
The construction of a gas power plant, as well as an oil pipeline, which Vučić also discussed with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this week, according to Batas Bjelic, is not in line with Serbia’s goals of decarbonizing the energy sector, but rather with the goals of further use of fossil fuels.
“If Serbia sees itself as a European country and one day a member of the EU, it should implement an energy transition, to have a sustainable energy policy that is not based on fossil fuels. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce renewable sources into Serbia’s energy sector and to export fossil fuels, because in this way we show awareness of the problems of dependence, health and climate change”, said Batas Bjelic.
Batas Bjelic believes that ideas about the peacetime use of nuclear energy in Serbia have not been sufficiently considered by the professional public, and that this is necessary before any investments of time and money.
“In general, it is always a technology that is available only to a small number of countries and you are completely dependent on them, and then the costs are unpredictable. Unlike renewables, where, despite all the technical challenges, the costs are predictable and bearable,” said Batas Bjelic.
Source: Beta
Photo: Pixabay
Source: bizlife.rs
