Czech Environment Ministry approves renovation of country’s biggest coal-fired power station

Earlier this year Micronesia called on the Czech Republic not to refit its biggest coal-fired power station, Prunéřov, saying the pollution it will produce threatens the tiny state’s future. The matter also proved controversial in the Czech Republic itself, leading to the departure of one cabinet minister. However, the Environment Ministry has now approved the project, despite the fact the plant’s owners ČEZ are not planning to install the best available technology.

Prunéřov power station, photo: Petr Štefek, Wikipedia

The Czech Environment Ministry announced on Thursday that it had given the green light to the renovation of the Prunéřov II coal–fired power station in north-west Bohemia, the country’s biggest single producer of carbon dioxide.

It is operated by the powerful energy company ČEZ, which is majority owned by the Czech state. A project to modernise the plant has proven controversial, even impacting the make-up of the caretaker Czech government.

An environment minister nominated by the Green Party, Jan Dusík, quit over the matter six weeks ago: he said he had not been given enough time to consider a study criticising the planned refitting over the fact ČEZ does not plan to use the most environmentally friendly technology available. That would cost more money.

But the newly installed environment minister, Rut Bízková, who worked for ČEZ in the 1990s, defended the decision to approve the project.

Rut Bízková, photo: CTK

“The best available technology is not only that which is the best when it comes to the environment, but also that which is financially tolerable. In Europe, they don’t always decide to only build power stations with the very best technology, though they can…they do use the best, from all possible points of view.”

Jan Rovenský is energy policy spokesman for the Czech branch of the environmental group Greenpeace; with other activists he has in the past climbed one of the huge chimneys at Prunéřov to protest at the renovation plans. I spoke to him moments after Thursday’s announcement.

“It’s really not a big surprise. I think the moment when Mrs Bízková was installed by ČEZ as the minister of the environment it was sure that her most important task was to issue a positive environmental impact statement on Prunéřov. It happened, and we are really not surprised.”

She wasn’t installed by ČEZ, she was installed by the prime minister.

Jan Rovenský

“Definitely, but after very clever manipulation of ČEZ, the outcome of which was that the Green Party left the government. People from the Green Party and experts from the climate department here at the ministry were the biggest stumbling blocks against a positive statement, so they were all removed.”

Recriminations may continue, but after a lengthy and sometimes bitter approval process, ČEZ now just needs some rubber stamps before it can begin the CZK 25-billion (USD 1.3 billion) project of renovating the Prunéřov II coal-fired power station.