Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina is yet to establish a prosumers’ scheme. As a result, as of June 2021, only one self-consum­er was registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 103 In addition, it is possible to generate electricity without feeding it into the grid, and some homes, public buildings and businesses have already done so, e.g. the Pecka Visitor’s Centre near Mrkonji ć Grad. 104 However the lack of subsidies for households to install photovoltaics means such invest­ments are still out of reach for most households. 105 PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING ON ENERGY POLICY AND INFRASTRUCTURE Public participation in decision-making is seriously hindered by the undue influence of the utilities on decision-making, widespread corruption and the country’s dysfunctional po­litical system. As a result, strategic documents such as the country’s energy strategy mainly perpetuate plans for coal and hydropower projects which have already been on the table for decades, crowding out more innovative ideas. There is little examination of whether these projects are at all relevant or feasible in today’s conditions – successive gov­ernments just keep pushing them. In this situation, strategic environmental assessments and environmental impact assessments – where they are carried out at all – cannot fulfil their potential as tools for public participation. They take place when investment decisions have already been made long ago, and thus become a for­mality. Moreover, in the cases of the Buk Bijela hydropower plant and Ulog hydropower plant, the EIAs were carried out at least a decade ago and were of very poor quality. 106 , 107 The legal conditions have greatly changed in the meantime, and in the Buk Bijela case, rafting tourism has developed at the site where the dam should be built. Yet the projects are be­ing pushed forward with no more avenues available for public consultation. For small hydropower plants, EIAs are often not carried out at all and communities find out about them at the moment the diggers turn up to start works. This has led to dramatic confrontations in several cases, notably at Kruš č ice, but also near Fojnica and on the Neretvica near Konjic. Updates to environmental legislation have taken place in both entities in recent years and it is to be hoped that this will help to reduce these issues somewhat, but the issue of pushing outdated but politically-supported projects re­mains. Access to justice is also a problem. Although some environ­mental challenges have been successful, many are not, and the reasons provided by the courts are far from convincing. Challenges to the environmental permits for the Tuzla 7 and Banovi ć i coal power plants were dismissed by a Sarajevo court because the NGO which submitted them, Ekotim, is based in Sarajevo and not Tuzla 108 – as if no one who lives more than a few kilometres away could possibly be interest­ed in the impacts of huge projects costing hundreds of mil­lions of euros. On the strategic level, it remains to be seen whether BiH’s NECP will bring any change compared to the Framework En­ergy Strategy and its updated Nationally Determined Contri­bution, 109 submitted in April 2021, which included a plan to build 1,050 MW of new coal plants but was not subject to an SEA. 110 So far, the NECP process has not been open to­wards the public. A draft text of the Plan has existed since at least November 2020 111 but as of mid-November 2021 has not been published yet. RECOMMENDATIONS AND NEXT STEPS Many of the issues of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s energy tran­sition go far beyond the energy sector and need to be ad­dressed as part of the wider governance of the country and rule of law. In terms of energy, however, being one of the biggest air polluters in Europe, coal phase-out plans should be devel­oped as a first step towards an inclusive energy transition. The country needs to consider future investments in energy infrastructure, including power plants, in the light of its ob­ligations under the Energy Community Treaty and Green Agenda. The Entity authorities must draw up a convincing plan to stop subsidising coal and start running the public utilities on market terms, and start engaging more honestly with those affected by job losses in the coal mines and those affected by air pollution. 103 Energy Community Secretariat, WB6 Energy Transition Tracker. 104 Balkan Green Energy News,‘First PV system in rural BiH installed thanks to crowdfunding campaign’, Balkan Green Energy News, 29 June 2021. 105 Klix.ba,‘Kakvi su uslovi za postavljanje solarnih panela u bh. ­doma ć instvima: Nužne velike promjene’. 106 Aarhus Center, Sarajevo, et al., Information for the attention of Im­plementation Committee, Convention on Environmental Impact As­sessment in a Transboundary Context(Espoo, 1991), 15 May 2020. 107 CEE Bankwatch Network,‘Complaint on Bosnia-Herzegovina dams on Neretva river submitted to the Bern Convention’, CEE Bankwatch Network, 22 October 2020. 108 Association‘Aarhus Center in BiH’, Center for Ecology and Energy – Aarhus Center Tuzla, Communication to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee, 2020. 109 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Nation­ally Determined Contribution of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Pe­riod 2020-2030, April 2021. 110 Center for Environment, Continuation of the farse(sic) and a new spin around the Nationally Determined Contribution of BiH(NDC) to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, 15 June 2021. 111 Energy Community, Implementation Indicators, National Energy and Climate Plans(NECPs), accessed 14 November 2021. 23