BELGRADE (Serbia), October 3 (SeeNews) – Serbia has started construction of a 28 million euro ($40 million) ash processing and disposal line system at plant B of the Nikola Tesla power station, part of an EU-funded anti-pollution programme, the country’s Energy Ministry said on Wednesday.
Plant B of the power station, situated some 30 kilometres south of Belgrade, has two power generation blocks of 620 megawatt (MW) capacity each.
“The construction should be completed in September 2008,” Dejan Stojadinovic, a press officer in the ministry, told SeeNews.
In March, Serbia's state-owned power monopoly Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) signed a 28 million euro EU-funded deal with Bosnian construction company Energoinvest for the building of the new ash disposal system.
The current project is part of a 65 million euro EU-funded programme that aims to tackle power plant pollution in EPS. Serbia completed last year a 5.0 million euro project as part of the EU programme for the replacement of the air filters at the Kostolac A plant, located in the east of the country.
“EPS will also have to invest some 1.2 billion euro by 2015 to fulfill all the EU ecological conditions,” Stojadinovic said. “This money won’t come from donations, EPS should provide it from own funds.” Serbia is part of the Southeast European Energy Community Treaty, signed in October 2005 by the European Union and several southeast European nations to set up a common energy market in the region. It also includes Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria and Kosovo.
EPS's total generating capacity, including coal-fired, oil-fired and hydro power plants, is 8,355 MW.
EPS is one of the state-owned monopolies which Serbia will have to partly privatise in the next few years. The monopoly includes 11 mining, power production and distribution companies.
($ = 0.7070 euro)