A lot of money and a long time were needed for the thermal power plant Ugljevik to eliminate the sign of one of the biggest air pollutants in Europe. Three years ago, a desulphurization system worth 85 million euros was installed, which almost completely eliminates the emission of sulfur dioxide and other harmful byproducts of electricity generation from coal. However, the expensive system was mostly not in operation in the past period. Why?
Mid-April this year. Control room of the desulfurization system of the Ugljevik thermal power plant. Employees at workplaces, but the system is not working. As of October 2020, this is the most common image. In the first year, according to the findings of the inspection, the plant worked for 15 days. Waiting for a use permit, lack of limestone, overhauls, testing are the listed reasons for the downtime. The license was obtained in November ’21. years.
“For the entire year 2022, due to catastrophic hydrological conditions, we needed much more energy. The priority was higher than the desulphurization work itself,” says the executive director for production and development of RiTE Ugljevik Milutin Tasovac.
Locals of Bogut’s village in the immediate vicinity of the plant can assess when ODG works and when it doesn’t.
“It’s a drastic difference. And what we can see is that there are no particles, the high chimney is not working, the chimney of the desulfurization system is smaller, it’s a white vapor that evaporates and works safely,” Aleksandar Krstić from Bogutovo Selo says.
“They mostly turn off the filters at night. As soon as they have a load of some kind. Because it’s probably economical, let the filters run a lot,” says Pero Todorović from Bogutovo Selo.
And the findings of the local authorities indicate that the practice of the EDC system has not changed much until today.
“Whether it is for some technical reasons or because it causes large costs, but the fact is that the desulfurization system may not work for 30 days in a year,” says the mayor of Ugljevik Municipality, Vasilije Perić.
The ODG system consumes 250 MW of electricity and 600 tons of limestone per day. The operation of the system costs about 15 million marks per year. As a result, the regulator approved an increase in the price of electricity from this thermal power plant. This is an additional 17 million marks, it was estimated. The conclusion of environmental activists is as follows.
“It is expensive for them to pay those costs because it is more profitable for them that the citizens pay the costs of treatment caused by that pollution,” says Denis Žiško from the Center for Ecology and Energy Tuzla.
According to a report by HEAL, the leading environmental non-profit organization in the EU, TE Ugljevik was among the biggest polluters in Europe before the installation of ODG. In 2016, it is said to have emitted more sulfur dioxide than all the thermal power plants in Germany. Through the work of ODG, these emissions are reduced by more than a hundred times.
“Output sizes were all the time at a level between 150 -200 mg/m3, the European norm is 200 mg, and solid particles did not exceed 5 mg during the entire time of operation of ODG, with the European norm being 20 mg,” the project manager for Vocational education at TE Ugljevik Zlatko Malović.
Months of efforts to get an explanation from Elektroprivreda RS about the problems in the work of ODG did not bear fruit. The Minister of Energy assures that the system must be in operation.
“Thus, we significantly contributed to extending the operation of the Ugljevik TPP, which is otherwise designated as an extremely large European polluter because the coal from Ugljevik has a high percentage of sulfur,” says RS Minister of Energy and Mining Petar Đokić.
According to the model from the HEAL report, set according to the recommendations of the World Health Organization in 2016, harmful emissions from TE Ugljevik caused 635 deaths, 494 hospitalizations, more than 190 thousand lost working days. By 2028, sulfur dioxide emissions should be linearly reduced to 200 mg/m3. Activating the desulfurization system, it was estimated, would reduce health costs between 900 million and 1.8 billion euros.
