Banktrack Blog

Game over for Plomin C – another dodgy coal deal bites the dust!

Jun 152016

By Greig Aitken and Yann Louvel, BankTrack, 15 June 2016

Big congratulations to Zelena akcija/Friends of the Earth Croatia following yesterday’s news that the long-proposed 500 MW Plomin C coal plant project in the Istrian peninsula is dead in the water.

Zelena akcija has been fighting the Plomin C project plans for five years. Over the last couple of years BankTrack has also campaigned on this ‘dodgy deal’, in tandem with CEE Bankwatch Network and Friends of the Earth France, owing to Crédit Agricole’s advisory role in the controversial €800 million investment and its expected potential key role in the eventual project financing. Continue reading »

After Slovenia’s Sostanj coal power plant debacle, is any bank going to finance Croatia’s Plomin C?

Jun 122015

By Pippa Gallop (Bankwatch) and Yann Louvel (BankTrack), 12 June 2015

This blog post is published jointly with Bankwatch.

Slovenia’s newly built Sostanj 6 power plant is expected to generate losses of around EUR 200 million over the next 3-4 years. This was the view put forward at a recent panel discussion in Zagreb by Blaz Kosorok, General Director of Holding Slovenske Elektrarne (HSE), Slovenia’s state-owned power generation company and the country’s largest company.

Given that Croatia’s Plomin C project shares some of Sostanj 6’s features – failure to really consider alternatives, a lack of transparency about costs, and failure to properly include the public in decision-making – could Croatia be about to repeat its neighbour’s mistakes? And how is the only major international financier involved in Plomin C to date – Crédit Agricole – viewing its own future in another looming Balkan coal power debacle? Continue reading »

European banks: It’s time to quit coal in Ukraine

Feb 132015

By Oleg Savistky, National Ecological Center of Ukraine and CEE BankWatch Network, 13 February 2015.

In a street action being held today in Kiev as part of the Global Divestment Day, Ukrainians call on public and private investors to end financing for fossil fuels, in particular coal, and instead invest in renewable energy sources which represent the only independent source for the country.

European commercial banks (such as Deutsche Bank, Uni Credit Bank, ING Bank, Raiffeisen Zentral Bank, Erste Group Bank, RBS and Barclays) are major investors in the coal industry in Ukraine, most notably in the integrated coal and energy company DTEK (see its entry on coalbanks.org).