As air pollution begins to rise in Macedonia, as it does every heating season, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said that the focus of his efforts to combat this problem will be to replace the use of wood (and coal and even old car tires) as fuel for home heating. The Prime Minister said that there are potential investors to build gas plants in Macedonia, in a deal worth a billion EUR.

We are working on several such projects. Today in the Government I’m meeting with a potential investor who would like to put down a billion EUR in generating capacities, and to operate under market conditions. My goal is that the state is part of the package, to be co-owner in the investment with the land and connectors. We will see how these negotiations end, this process will not happen overnight, but I expect that it will be finished in up to three years, Mickoski said.

Only the denser downtown areas of Skopje are heated through a gas fired warm water system. In much of the capital and all other cities households use wood, coal or expensive electricity to heat up, leading to the chronic problem of air pollution every winter. Mickoski said that the idea is to use the planned gas fired electricity generating plants to also heat water that will be piped into homes.