A Climate for Change

Human Development Report - Croatia 2008 Reducing emissions in Croatia – the Costs of Mitigation^211

In order to achieve the ‘absolutely best case scenario’
described above, a number of issues must be ad-
dressed:

• The public and businesses must play a large role
  in implementing energy efficiency measures. This
  is the most economical way to reduce emissions
  in transportation, the households and services
  sector and in many industrial areas.


• All public and private institutions – especially in
  the energy, industrial, and agricultural sectors –
  need to streamline processes for ensuring that
  carbon emissions are reduced where possible
  and in a non-controversial manner.


• A number of outstanding technical issues will
  have to be resolved – for example the amount
  of cement in road construction, the amount of
  fertilisers that farmers should use, the crop rota-
  tions for agriculture that might include carbon
  sequestration, the amount of ruminants versus
  non-ruminants kept on farms, the placement of
  small hydro plants, and many others.


• A number of questions about potentially social-
  ly-unpopular measures which account for major
  portions of carbon reduction would need to be
  addressed.


• The use of bio-fuels needs further discussion –
  especially as biodiesel has come under fire in the

past year because of the possibility that it leads

to food shortages and price increases.

• Issues related to the thermal processing of waste
  
  
  • or incineration – need to be resolved. They
    could potentially lead to political conflict among
    communities near any waste treatment plant.
  
  
  
  


• Building nuclear plants instead of coal or gas
  fired plants accounts for 5.5 million tonnes of
  reductions. However, nuclear power is not the
  most popular investment and it is questionable
  because of its social acceptance. Participatory
  decision-making must occur and proper precau-
  tions must be taken.

In conclusion, this analysis shows that the theoretical

potential for reductions in emissions in Croatia is high,

if the price of GHGs is set at EUR 25 per tonne. How-

ever, while this potential does exist and seems to be

achievable at a relatively low cost, the actual capacity

of various actors to implement all the measures is much

less certain. There are many political, institutional, tech-

nical, and legal considerations that must be taken into

account before moving forward with any of the mea-

sures. These are discussed in more detail in Chapter 13.

However, numerous measures have been identified as

no-regrets measures that can have a significant impact.

These are primarily oriented towards the following:

Figure 12-9: Projections for total costs for various types of measures for 2020

Type of Reduction Measures

-400.000

-300.000

-200.000

-100.000

0

100.000

200.000

300.000

400.000

500.000

600.000

-241.755

-170.435

-337.858

-73.772

-329.287

-48.999

114.728

535.909

No Regrets/

Positive economic

benefit

With measures

that are likely to

be cost neutral

With measures

justified at EUR 25/

tonne CO 2 e

With more

expensive

measures.

Total annual cost minimum (x1000 EUR)

Total annual cost maximum (x1000 EUR)