Over the last fifteen years, energy produced from renewable energy sources started to have a crucial role in Croatia’s electricity supply chain. In the last several years, there has been an ever-growing interest in the development of greenfield and brownfield renewable energy projects with an exponential rise, particularly in the development of solar projects.
The Energy Development Strategy of the Republic of Croatia until 2030 with an outlook to 2050 foresees the share of renewables in the total energy consumption to grow to 65.6% by 2050, thus reaching goals set in the EU’s Fitfor55 strategy. By 2030, wind energy is expected to account for 21.3% of power generation from renewable energy sources, solar energy for 6.1% and geothermal energy for 0.8%.
Hydropower will still account for most of the electricity production from renewables with a 44% share, which is less than today’s 46%. Biomass and the use of biogas have also become more popular, however, there are currently debates about whether they are to be considered as renewables or not. Croatia has its organised electricity market – the Croatian Power Exchange Market (CROPEX) – a central place for trading electricity between buyers and sellers.
In recent years, CROPEX has been a part of several projects for multiregional day-ahead coupling and has successfully coupled with BSP South Pool Energy Exchange (i.e., Slovenian and Serbian power exchange markets) and Hungarian Power Exchange (HUPX). In June 2023, the European Energy Exchange (EEX) and CROPEX launched a market for Croatian power derivatives (futures).
Source: seenext.org
