Environmentalists asks government to refuse environmental permission to ENEL study reveals major problems.

TIRANA, April 2؁ study made by ENEL on the environmental impact of the coal fueled thermo power plant in Porto Romano contains mistakes, deformation and lacks the necessary criteria according to European expertise.
The Porto Romano project includes two units of thermal power plants at a power of 800 MW each, a 400 Kw interconnection line linking the thermal power plant with Tirana’s transit station, a 500 Kw undersea interconnection line link between Albania and Italy and a jetty for handling the imported coal.
The thermal power plant will use coal to produce electricity and will use sea water to cool machineries. According to ENEL officials, their technology is environmentally friendly and that in the future it will be possible to use a Carbon Capture System CCS, to reduce pollution.
The environmental standards of such an investment by ENEL have been the leading argument in the ongoing public debate among groups of interest, central and local authorities, governmental and non-governmental experts. Environmental groups estimate that if our government moves forward with the plant project proposed by ENEL, its carbon-fired thermal-power plants will increase carbon emissions in Albanian by 6 to 7 million tons every year, doubling the emissions that the country currently produces.
One ton of carbon emissions today in the EU costs between 24 to 60 EUR, while in Sweden, for every ton of carbon emitted into the air, companies pay a tax of 150 EUR, revenue that is reinvested in green energy projects that aim to avert the effects of global warming, exasperated by green house gases.
According to the Institute for Environmental Studies, Albania stands to lose every year around 250-to-300 million EUR in carbon tax revenues alone, while according to the government most of the electricity produced by ENEL will be exported in Italy.
In order to secure a more neutral and qualified expertise about the Porto Romano project, the Ekolevizja Group asked the European partners, CEE Bankwatch Monitor (BWN) to reevaluate the environmental study made by ENEL
The reevaluation from BWN has identified 25 mistakes and deformations made in the original study such as “The lack of elements in the ENEL study enforced by Albanian law: monitoring plan and environmental management; hazardous waste management; social impact management; emergencies and accidents response.”
In addition, the BWN report identified “The lack of evaluation of at least two alternative locations for the project; the environmental impacts have been estimated using inadequate input data and inappropriate assumptions; wrong data used regarding European standards.”
Lastly, it was noted that “ENEL’s commitment to treat CO2 emissions is impossible to achieve because the required technology (Carbon Capture System CCS) is still in experimental stages.”
As a result, Ekolevizja has asked the Albanian government and the Ministry of Environment to not issue the environmental permission for the ENEL project without taking into consideration the reevaluation report made by the BWN.
“This environmental revaluation over an investment shows that environmental truth in Albania is not usually told, therefore it has direct consequences on the economy, environment and people’s health. The Albanian government and the Ministry of Environment must recreate a process that guarantees seriosity and higher requirements environment polluting activities in general and polluting projects in particular,” the press release stated.