‘Green’ Energy in ‘Red’ Yugoslavia: The Failure of Hydroelectric Power in Yugoslavia between the 1960s and 1980s

Miljković, Marko (2024) ‘Green’ Energy in ‘Red’ Yugoslavia: The Failure of Hydroelectric Power in Yugoslavia between the 1960s and 1980s. Economic Analysis, 57. pp. 17-35. ISSN 2560-3949

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Abstract

This research focuses on the positive and negative experiences with renewable energy in socialist Yugoslavia in order to provide suggestions to contemporary policymakers based on a historical experience that is very limited. The fact that the country at times produced up to 75% of its electricity for industry and households in hydroelectric power plants is an admirable achievement from the perspective of the contemporary EU Green Deal. However, the experiences were sometimes catastrophic, ranging from city blackouts to prolonged production stoppages in industry. Despite some exceptions, the existing Serbian or regional scholarship has not yet analyzed this topic except from technological or engineering perspectives. Starting from that point, this research employs a critique of the sources as a standard historical method. It is based on primary and secondary sources, stretching from official Yugoslav policies and statistics, expert analyses, and newspaper articles. Previous experiences with electricity production in hydroelectric power plants in Yugoslavia are crucial in adequately approaching the EU Green Deal agenda that includes the expansion of renewable energy sources, which is and will most certainly be one of the pressing challenges in the future. At the current level of technological capabilities, the transition to renewable energy, whether from hydro, solar, wind, or geothermal sources, faces a challenge in providing a continuous flow of energy to industry and households. Lacking capacities for storage of vast amounts of electric energy, the solutions to this challenge will have to be found in conventional sources, among which nuclear power currently seems to be the best option, despite other environmental and safety concerns it raises.

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