Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with Kosovo, has the dubious distinction of not complying with the pollution ceilings for any of the required pollutants: sulphur dioxide, dust or nitrogen oxides.  

The most serious breaches are for sulphur dioxide. In 2022, just as in 2021, sulphur dioxide emissions from the NERP plants in BiH reached more than eight times as much as allowed – 182,667 tonnes, compared to the ceiling of 22,195 tonnes. The worst offender in BiH in terms of absolute emissions was once again Ugljevik with 85,526 tonnes,

Dust emissions in 2022 amounted to 4,892 tonnes – 2.9 times as much as the allowed ceiling. This represented a certain decrease from the previous year’s peak of 6,040 tonnes, but was still massively more than the 2,686 tonnes emitted in 2020. This very high level was largely due to massive dust emissions from the Gacko plant, which were twelve times as high as the plant’s ceiling in 2022.

Nitrogen oxides emissions in 2022 totalled 11,944 tonnes compared to the allowed ceiling of 9,036 tonnes, representing a drop compared to 14,273 tonnes in 2021. Nevertheless, NOx emissions in 2022 were still 1.3 times as high as the ceiling.

In addition, two of the units that were under the ‘opt-out’ regime, Tuzla 4 and Kakanj 5, used up their 20,000 hours during 2022 after which they continued operation. This is another clear breach of the Energy Community Treaty which the Federation of BiH Parliament tried to circumvent by voting in favour of a decision to move these two plants to the NERP and thus allow them to continue operation, although this is not allowed by the Treaty acquis.