The Administrative Court in Ljubljana annulled the decision of the Slovenian Government, according to which, the public interest in the field of renewable energy sources is above the interest for nature protection within the procedure of issuing of building permit for the hydropower plant Mokrice, the last in the series of HPPs on the Sava river. In 2019, the Court already annulled the building permit issued by the Slovenian Environmental Agency (ARSO).
The Court assessed that the entire Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure must be carried out before initiating the public interest procedure. The project’s investor HESS, a part of GEN Group, hopes that the repeated procedure for determining the predominance of the public interest will be carried out as soon as possible, in order to obtain a building permit as soon as possible.
HPP Mokrice project envisages that the new 28.05 MW HPP should have water inflow of 500 cubic meters per second and that its annual electricity generation should amount to 128 GWh. Estimated cost of the project is around 177 million euros. The construction was supposed to start by the end of 2019 and the plant should have been completed in mid-2022. In September 2017, 45 MW HPP Brezice, fourth of the five planned HPPs in the lower Sava project, has been officially commissioned.
Last year, HESS signed a 19 million euros worth contract with local company Litostroj Power, owned by Czech Energo-Pro, on the supply of equipment for HPP Mokrice project.
