Rizvanolli: Agreement with MCC to help Kosovo energy independence

Economy Minister Artan Rizvanolli, who headed Kosovo's negotiating team, said in an interview for Voice of America that $20m is grant from the MCC, while the rest is co-financed by the Kosovo government. She said the programme has two projects.

The first “concerns building capacity for energy accumulate. We are looking to build the capacity for 340 megawatts per hour to accumulate this amount of energy, which will be at the moment the highest capacity for per capita accumulate of energy in Europe is built. It's a very innovative project that looks towards the future that will have energy independence on one side and the integration of renewable energy resources into our energy system, part in which we are currently breaking up, but that's what we intend to change with the new” strategy, she said.

Minister Rizvanolli said the next project within the programme concerns developing labour skills to adapt to the needs of a dynamic and innovative market, as well as better representation of women in the energy sector.

The project aims to be used by batteries, energy produced at a given time to accumulate in order to use it later in the day hours when the price of energy is higher and demand is higher.

“Which means that this in a measure will reduce the need for import what is very important in the times that we are living in, when the price of import energy has increased a lot”, she said.

The agreement follows a long period of debate following your government's September decision last year to withdraw from the draft proposed by this corporation, which envisioned Kosovo's link to an existing gas pipeline with Northern Macedonia. Mrs. Rizvanelli says that even in light of new developments, the decision was the right one, since in the absence of information, it was determined that the grant was used for another purpose.

That door has never been closed, so to be clear it is not that the project has been rejected, has been established, simply by seeing the lack of information, but also by seeing market developments, is set to be postponed for later. Meanwhile, the situation has only been complicated and the use of gas has become more controversial, so we are happy that we made that decision last year”, she said.

Minister Rizvanolli says the Kosovo government's long-term goal is defuelisation of the sector and integration as much as the highest level of renewable energy sources. But she admits that it may be difficult to cut short from the use of coal, given the current situation in the world.

We are aware that this will not be done overnight. Technical capacity doesn't allow it first, let alone financial and other. So we're going to have to have a transition that's realistic, planned in terms and realistic way from coal to renewable energy resources, and this kind of investment like this one that will be invested with this grant for accounting capacities, is priorly the right investment that enables us to make this transition from coal to renewable energy sources”, she said.

The finalised agreement in Washington will be signed after voting in the assembly and approved by the MCC Board.