Serbia has a total potential for installing wind turbines of two and a half gigawatts

The popularity of wind power plants is growing worldwide due to their long-term economic viability, but also the role they play in preserving the environment, writes the BBC, and adds that environmental activists also warn that there are problems.
Today, the total annual capacity of wind farms worldwide reached 774 gigawatts, which meets seven percent of world electricity demand, according to the report of the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA) for 2020.
China produces the most electricity annually using wind energy – as much as 290 gigawatts, while in Europe, Germany is the leader in the use of wind energy, with 62.7 gigawatts of electricity obtained in this way in 2020.
Serbia currently has nine wind farms, with a total annual capacity of about 400 megawatts, and most of them are in Banat and Eastern Serbia, because those areas are the windiest.
According to the BBC, the largest “wind farm” in Serbia is Cibuk 1 in the Banat village of Mramorak, and it is owned by the Balkan Wind Farm (WEBG), a subsidiary of Tesla Wind. Tesla Wind, as its branch, was founded by the American company Continental Wind Serbia (CWS), whose current owners, according to the company’s website, are Masdar from the United Arab Emirates, Taaleri Energia from Finland and a branch of the German development bank KfW.
Fintel energija AD manages the wind farm in Kula and the “wind farms” La Picolina and Kosava in the vicinity of Vrsac, and plans to build nine new wind farms in Vojvodina and Eastern Serbia, writes the BBC.
The Belgian company Elicio owns the Malibunar and Alibunar wind farms in Banat, and the Kovacica wind farm belongs to the Enlight Energy company based in Israel.
Devrec I wind farm in the municipality of Tutin is owned by the Slovenian-Serbian company Hidro Wind, while the Kitka wind farm is managed by the company Air Energy from the United Arab Emirates.
“The plain is, of course, the first choice, but Serbia has a lot of potential for the use of wind energy,” said Zvezdan Kalmar, coordinator for energy and climate change at the Center for Environment and Sustainable Development (CEKOR).
Serbia has a total potential for installing wind turbines of two and a half gigawatts, analyzes of this non-governmental association of citizens, whose goal is to promote sustainable development and improve the state of the environment, have shown.
When calculating the energy potential of wind power per person in Serbia it is provided that it is used, about 0.91 KWh (annual electricity production per day) – which is one sixth of the daily consumption of the population in the household, the energy portal reported.
Environmental activists in a statement for the BBC warn that wind farms can still bring problems, because suitable locations for the construction of wind farms in Serbia are located near the habitat of a large number of birds or on their migratory routes.
“If they are not designed correctly, wind farms can cause permanent damage to birds and bats,” said Milan Ruzic, president of the Society for the Protection and Study of Birds of Serbia.
The most endangered are large birds and predators such as eagles, falcons, storks and vultures that have no natural enemy. In addition to Banat, Ruzic also mentions the Swan Shaft on the course of the Danube not far from Kovin. During the winter, more than 100,000 birds stay there and it would be “catastrophic” to build wind farms near this oasis of nature, he estimates.
“Nothing in nature rotates at the speed at which wind turbine propellers rotate. It goes up to 250 kilometers per hour and wild animals, primarily birds and bats, do not have a defense mechanism against it,” notes Ruzic and warns that although one-year monitoring is mandatory to assess the impact on the environment, the quality and methodology of these studies is unknown.
“We are aware that large companies are quite powerful in this area and they can put some pressure on decision makers,” he concluded in his BBC text, Bonitet reports.