Two environmental NGOs published a highly critical report on the planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage terminal on the northern Adriatic island of Krk, and called the government to abandon the project.

In their report NGOs Zelena Akcija (“Green Action”) and Friends of the Earth Europe said that the project not only violates the Paris Agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but that it is also unnecessary, expensive, and against the interests of the local community.

As a result, they called on the Croatian government – the main stakeholder in the LNG Hrvatska company set up to build and manage the storage facility – scrap the entire plan.

“Considering the existing natural gas infrastructure and projects under way in the region, Croatia and its neighbouring countries are already secure in terms of energy supplies,” the NGOs said.

Zelena Akcija said that the project, which they say is mainly an attempt to reduce Russia’s dominance in the natural gas market, is a failed strategy to do so because the gas supply infrastructure already in place isn’t used to its full capacity, from which they deduce that the project would merely result in more Russian gas.

Building the terminal is also not in line with the Paris Agreement which obliged EU member countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030, the NGOs said.

In addition, the report says, the project goes against this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warning that natural gas is a carbon-intensive fossil fuel that harms the climate, and therefore cannot be considered a so-called transition fuel to ease the switch towards renewables.

“There are other ways to improve the energy security of Croatia and its neighbouring countries and to de-carbonise their energy systems – and those ways have been proven to be more cost-competitive and more sustainable,” the NGOs said, proposing a reduction in energy consumption through efficiency programmes, and more emphasis on investing in renewable energy sources.

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