The three-day international conference Days of RES has been opened

The connection fee to the electricity grid will be known by July at the latest, and by 2030, Croatia will have about 10.5 gigawatts of total electricity generation capacity, of which eight gigawatts will be renewable.

This is just part of the news revealed at the Days of Renewable Energy (Dani OIE) which are being held from today until June 14 in Pula, where the organizers, Renewable Energy Sources of Croatia (OIEH), have gathered more than 400 experts.

Public policies in the renewable energy sector were the topic of the first day of the Days of RES, and before she took her seat at the moderator’s chair, OIEH director Maja Pokrovac emphasized that every meeting of the energy sector is an opportunity for learning and growth.

– It is very important for the industry to take on a new form because the green transition not only enables progress in terms of clean energy but also creates jobs for highly educated young people and promotes regional development – said Maja Pokrovac.

That this is indeed the case was confirmed by the deputy prefect of Istria County Tulio Demetlika, who said that his county is working on a new spatial plan where energy is the top priority.

– We are working on a new Istrian Ypsilon, in an energy sense. We plan to connect 400 megawatts of solar energy, but since the sun is not always shining, we have also planned battery stations of 150 megawatts that will be useful to us in the summer when 600 thousand tourists arrive and our grid is at maximum overload, threatening us with a ‘blackout’ – explained Demetlika, adding that Istria County wants to be autonomous in terms of electricity, and hopes that the mentioned batteries will be operational in ten years.

Istrians do not have to worry about grid overload, emphasized state secretary in the Ministry of Economy Ivo Milatić, stating that amendments to the Spatial Planning Act will determine the exact routes of power lines, and by 2030,’it will be known where the wires go’. And by 2030, Milatić says, out of 10.5 gigawatts of total electricity generation capacity, eight gigawatts will be renewable. The state secretary also explained what is happening with the revision of the National Energy and Climate Plan, which the European Union has declared ‘unambitious’.

– It is true that the first ‘draft’ of the Plan is not very happy, and I take responsibility for not getting involved in its preparation earlier. We are now working on it, and it will be quite different. By 2030, we plan to connect two gigawatts of wind energy to the grid, 319 megawatts of geothermal energy, and four gigawatts of solar energy, and I am confident that this number will be even higher – said Milatić, adding that biogas and biomass will remain at the levels originally submitted in the Plan. The state secretary emphasized that the Croatian Energy Regulatory Agency (HERA) will finally determine the connection fee to the grid by July at the latest, which could finally activate renewable energy projects worth one billion euros that have been waiting for this decision from HERA for two and a half years.

Tugomir Majdak, state secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Water Management, said that the state is considering the possibility of installing agrivoltaics in agricultural areas with permanent crops, and emphasized that a lot has already been done when investors were allowed to build agrivoltaics without location and building permits.

And if a solar power plant is built up to 10 megawatts, along with the main project, it can also be built without a building permit, which was allowed by amending the Regulation on Simple Buildings, as emphasized by Tonči Glavinić, acting director of the Office for the Implementation of Earthquake Recovery at the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction, and State Property.

As for floating solar and wind power plants, for which OIEH has already mapped the Adriatic, they may not come so soon, said Bojan Linardić, director of the Institute for Spatial Development at the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction, and State Property.

– The preparation of a special plan, the Spatial Plan of the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Republic of Croatia, has begun, and it is mandatory to adopt it within two to three years. There are currently no renewable energy sources in it because they are not in the Spatial Development Strategy from 2017, which is why they cannot be in the spatial planning documents. Expert foundations are needed; feasibility, possibility, impact of such interventions, and then with substantiated foundations, we can enter the drafting and amendment of documents – said Linardić.

Walburga Hemetsberger, director of SolarPower Europe, congratulated Croatia on the ‘year of solar’ as 250 percent more solar panels were built here last year than the year before. She also expressed concern that only 2-3 percent of panels are currently produced in Europe, while Giles Dickson, director of WindEurope, was not satisfied with the fact that any development of renewable energy in Croatia is still being hindered by administration.

– Twenty percent of the electricity consumed in Europe comes from wind, and by 2030, it should be 42.5 percent. How can we achieve that when just for one of the three permits needed for a wind farm, so much paperwork is required – showing a photo with about 50 binders of documents, Dickson explained his point.

Samanta Barić, head of the Department for Urbanism, Investments, and Development Projects of the City of Pula, said that Croatia ranks 13th in Europe in wind energy usage and 24th in solar energy usage. Pula, she emphasized, recognizes the potential of its area and is working on implementing numerous projects.

On Thursday, the second day of the conference, we expect panel discussions on the topic of solarization of Croatia, then what is the further perspective of wind power plants in our country, whether the rules for connecting to the grid can be simplified, and what challenges geothermal energy faces.