September 18 (SeeNews) - The Energy Community, an organisation promoting the establishment of an integrated European energy market, said it has opened a dispute settlement procedure against Albania over the environmental impact assessment of the HPP Pocem project on the Vjosa river.
The secretariat of the Vienna-based organisation has sent an opening letter to Albania addressing its concerns after finding violations of EU regulations in the administrative procedures conducted for the project, the Energy Community said in a statement earlier this week.
"In particular, the Secretariat preliminarily found that the administrative procedures conducted for the project were not in line with the provisions of Directive 2011/92/EU, with particular regard to the Directive’s requirements on the content of the environmental report and its public participation provisions," the statement reads.
Albania now has two months to react to the allegation and to enable the Secretariat to establish the full background of the case, the Energy Community added.
Albania's government in 2016 awarded a concession to build the Pocem dam to Kovlu Energij sh.p.k, a special purpose vehicle formed by two Turkish companies, the energy company Ayen Enerji Sirketi Anonymous and the construction company Cinar-San Hafriyat Nakliyat Turizm Insaat San Ve Tic Ltd.Sti, the secretariat's opening letter shows.
The project includes a dam of 23-25 meters in height and a reservoir covering a surface of 23.5 square kilometres with a volume of 295 million cubic metres of water. The installed capacity is envisaged to be 99.5 MW and the annual electricity output 305.4 GWh.