Environment Energy Mining Watch SEE|News|Extended life of coal-fired thermal power plant Kostolac A by 15 years

Extended life of coal-fired thermal power plant Kostolac A by 15 years

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By joining the Energy Community, Serbia has committed itself to harmonizing emissions from thermal power plants with EU requirements. Kostolac A is just one of the thermal power plants in the region that has been forced to reduce emissions that pollute the air because otherwise it must be closed. The task for that comes from the EU directives that the countries of the region, as members of the Energy Community, have accepted and committed to implement. Therefore, the extension of the service life of units A1 and A2 in the next 15 years requires the inevitable introduction of the process of desulphurization of flue gases that they emit.

According to the announcements coming from Elektroprivreda Srbije, the lifespan of the Kostolac A thermal power plant will be extended by 15 years, ie until 2038, and that will be achieved by installing flue gas desulphurization equipment and reducing sulfur dioxide emissions below the limit currently allowed in the European Union, reports Balkangreenenergynews.

EPS has announced a tender for the preparation of conceptual solutions and projects with feasibility studies for the construction of a plant that will perform desulphurization of flue gases for units A1 and A2, with a total capacity of 310 MW. There is also a plant for the treatment of existing and wastewater from the desulphurization plant.

EPS also built a desulphurization plant in TPP Kostolac B, at the end of 2017, but it is not clear whether that plant works with reduced intensity or does not work at all.

According to the tender documentation, EPS intended to shut down TPP Kostolac in the period 2023-2025 by 2015, but in 2017 he decided to modernize it and extend its working life by about 100,000 effective working hours or until 2038.

By the way, in order to implement the Directive on large combustion plants, Serbia has decided to adopt a plan defining the limit of total emissions of SO2, NOx, suspended particles of all large combustion plants in the country, including TPP Morava and TPP Kolubara A.

EPS points out in the tender documentation that the purpose of the plant in Kostolac is to reduce the concentration of SO2 below the emission limit value, which is defined in the relevant EU regulations, but it is not stated what the current emissions are.

The desulphurization project at TPP Kostolac B is causing numerous controversies in the public, because it itself has exceeded the national limit of Serbia for SO2.

In June this year, CEE Bankwatch announced that SO2 emissions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo *, Northern Macedonia and Serbia were six times the limits set by the National Emission Reduction Plans (NERPs).

TPP Kostolac B thus exceeded the national limit of Serbia, defined in the NERP, 1.45 times, and its individual limit almost ten times.

The desulphurization equipment was installed there by China Machinery Engineering Corp., so the authors of the report claim that the system is not functioning properly, while the voice was raised by non-governmental organizations, as well as some opposition politicians. The Institute for Renewable Energy Sources (RERI) states that the plant cannot work because it does not have a use permit, while EPS is not announcing that occasion for now.

Source: novaekonomija.rs

 

 

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