This immense atmospheric pollution contributes to global warming and its consequences are visible locally, with thousands of deaths per year in the WB and neighboring countries, since pollution doesn’t recognize borders.
As candidates to EU integration, the WB countries are supposed to embrace the European New Green Deal and start their transition from coal toward renewable energy sources, where they have an unexplored potential. But they don’t, and with the energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine, they revive the coal industry to avoid electricity shortage and even bigger inflation. But the prices of electricity have never taken into account the underestimated and under-reported health cost paid by the consumers, especially those living nearby the coal plants...
Photo © Geoffrey Brossard / Hans Lucas: Coal extracted from the Kakanj mine is sorted and then transported to power stations.
