Belgrade, 24 January 2024 - Ministry of Environmental Protection and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) held a training for operators of plats that produce energy and energy-intensive industrial plants on submitting requests for permits for the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). More than 130 participants attended the training.
In accordance with the Law on Climate Change, all operators of these facilities in Serbia are obliged to obtain a permit for GHG emissions, and the request is submitted through the digital portal, the e-GHG platform.
"This training is part of the support that the Ministry provides to operators in order to pass this mandatory procedure more easily. Likewise, the experts have been engaged and are there to assist the preparation of documentation that is required for this permit," said Sandra Dokić, State Secretary of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, on this occasion.
Permits for GHG emissions are a step towards establishing a system for monitoring, reporting and verifying of these emissions, which aims to reduce GHG emissions from the industrial sector in the long term and accelerate the decarbonization of the economy.
"Decarbonization is at the core of the green transformation, the development direction that Serbia committed to by signing the Sofia Declaration on the Green Agenda. In order to reduce the carbon footprint of the economy, we also provide financial support, through the mechanism of the "Challenge Call for Proposals for Innovative Solutions for the Green Transition of the Serbian Economy", reminded Miroslav Tadić, Programme Analyst for Environment and Climate change at UNDP.
Legal obligations of ETS operators arising from the Law on Climate Change, i.e. the Regulation on Types of Activities and Greenhouse Gases and the Rulebook on Monitoring and Reporting on GHG Emissions, as well as the specific steps that need to be taken in order to fulfill them were presented during the training.
"It was especially significant for us to learn about the prescribed procedures that should be undertaken within the plant so that the results required for the preparation of the monitoring plan and report on GHG emissions would be as accurate as possible, in order to avoid errors in the calculation," said Milenko Topalović, Head of the Environmental Protection and Development Service at the "Impol Seval", Sevojno Aluminum Rolling Mill.
This is the third in a series of trainings organized within the project "EU for the Green Agenda in Serbia" in order to prepare ETS operators to adequately respond to new legal obligations.
The project "EU for the Green Agenda in Serbia", with the technical and financial support of the European Union and in partnership with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, is implemented by UNDP in cooperation with the Embassy of Sweden and the European Investment Bank (EIB), with additional financial resources provided by the governments of Sweden. Switzerland and Serbia.