Kyoto Protocol Objectives in Croatia Energy Planning

Abstract

Croatia as an Annex I country of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and a country that has pledged in the Annex of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce its greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions by 5% from the pre-transition level by the budget period 2008–12, will have to envisage a new energy strategy. Compared to the energy consumption collapse in some transitional countries like Russia and Ukraine, Croatia has passed through a relatively limited long term reduction of GHG emissions since 1990 because of higher efficiency of its pre-transition economy. It is expected that in case of business as usual scenario it will breach the Kyoto target in 2003 since the demand for energy will be high, especially as the income continues to rise, especially in domestic use for heating, for transport and for electricity generation. Several scenarios of developing energy system are compared from the point of view of GHG emissions. Business as usual scenario covers the planned gasification of coastal Croatia. In the transport sector no GHG reduction compared to the business as usual scenario is expected, unless there are technology innovations on global automotive industry level. The energy sector that will most probably be the most influenced by the UNFCCC objectives is electricity generation. Several scenarios are compared. The cost-effective scenario expects a mixture of coal and gas fired power plants to be built to satisfy the new demand and to replace the old power plants that are being decommissioned. More Kyoto friendly scenario envisages avoiding the construction of the most of the future fossil fuel power plants, while decommissioning the old ones as planned, and is compared to the others from the GHG emissions point of view. The conclusion is that by measures tackling only electricity generation it will not be possible to keep GHG emission under the Kyoto target level.