Thermal power stations often become sources of environmental pollution. Among the factors in combined heat and power plants’ operation that critically affect the environment, scientists identify low-grade fuel, outdated production technologies and a lack of appropriate environmental protection systems.
The Moldavskaya GRES thermal power station operates in the part of Moldova occupied by Russia since 1992, in the so-called Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.
Its impacts were investigated by journalists from the civic organisation “Zelenyi Lyst” together with their Moldovan colleagues from TV8.
Environmental problems
The station was built in 1964. Its capacity is 2520 megawatts, and its available capacity is 1700 megawatts. Moldavskaya GRES (MGRES) can run on coal, natural gas and fuel oil. Its outdated equipment means the station causes significant environmental damage.
According to Moldova’s Ministry of Environment, MGRES emitted approximately 3 thousand kilotonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere between 2015 and 2021. By comparison, the largest combined heat and power plant in the territory controlled by Moldova emitted six times less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the same period.
MGRES also poses significant environmental and technological threats to Ukraine. These include the threat of flooding Ukrainian villages because of its cooling reservoir and the undisposed-of waste resulting from the operation of the Transnistrian thermal power station.
Svitlana Slesarenok has been working on this region’s problems since the early 2000s. She notes that the Kuchurhan Reservoir was built exclusively for the needs of Moldavskaya GRES.
The reservoir is artificially maintained at a level of up to 3.5 metres for water intake and cooling of the thermal power station. The station uses water from the Dniester, Turunchuk and Kuchurhan rivers. The Ukrainian villages of Kuchurhan and Lymanske lie below the reservoir’s water level. This is a continuous process: without replenishment of the reservoir, MGRES cooling would stop, posing the risk of a technological disaster. At the same time, if the pumping station fails to operate to regulate the reservoir’s water level, the villages around the Kuchurhan Reservoir remain at risk of flooding.
There is a flooding risk for 380 households in Kuchurhan, approximately a third of the total, and more than 100 households in Lymanske.
“Environmental problems, technological problems, problems of financial provision, problems of illness among the population. This reservoir was created for the economic activities of Moldavskaya GRES. To prevent the threat of flooding, a system of protective structures was built. That was in 1967,” explains Larysa Husak, deputy head of the settlement of Lymanske (Ukraine).
MGRES refuses to maintain the drainage system
As Svitlana Slesarenok, head of the civic organisation “Black Sea Women’s Club” (Ukraine), explains, MGRES representatives now refuse to maintain the drainage system, so the entire financial burden falls on local communities:
“Until 1999, Moldavskaya GRES itself maintained it and supplied electricity free of charge, and the pumps pumped water and protected the population from flooding. Then, in 1999, the station stopped doing this. To sustain the technological process of the Moldavskaya power station itself, local communities spend money pumping out water so they do not drown. Today this whole system is in an emergency state. And it is unclear what environmental consequences this could lead to.”
The entire financial burden for Moldavskaya GRES’s pumping and drainage system rests on the community budget in Ukraine. Besides routine repairs, regular maintenance and employees’ wages, the community is forced to spend money on electricity to operate it. Since 2004, 6.8 million hryvnias has already been spent for these purposes from the community’s local budget alone. At today’s rate, that is more than 170 thousand euros, but in reality the amount is much larger, considering exchange-rate changes over the past 20 years.
“As a community, we gain absolutely nothing from the Transnistrian republic conducting economic activity and producing electricity. We only cover our losses,” says Larysa Husak.
MGRES makes money
Throughout the period when Ukrainian communities bore the costs of supporting the Transnistrian power station’s operation, the Russian company MGRES, registered in Chișinău, exported electricity to the European Union.
According to the Customs Service of the Republic of Moldova, MGRES sold electricity on the EU market from 2007 to 2013. The Customs Service of the Republic of Moldova refused to disclose the value of the exports, citing confidentiality.
“The pumps run for an average of 8 to 12 hours, depending on how full the channels are and on the weather. One pump removes 2600 cubic metres an hour. In terms of electricity consumption, one electric motor is rated at 55 kilowatts. You can imagine how much electricity that consumes over 12 hours of operation. So it was very difficult for us as a village council. A third of our budget went on maintaining the pumping station,” explains Anatolii Levytskyi, village elder of Kuchurhan (Ukraine).
Anatolii Levytskyi says the pumps were last repaired in 2016 and 2019 respectively. Their service life after repair is 5–7 years. The pumps, of which there are four in total, could therefore fail soon. There is another difficulty: they are Russian-made, they are simply not available in Ukraine now, and it is still unclear what could replace them and, most importantly, how much that would cost:
“Moldavskaya GRES is categorically opposed to participating in repairs or providing technical assistance. They refuse completely and sign no reports. Commissions concerning Moldavskaya GRES have met here repeatedly. There were representatives of Moldova, representatives of Transnistria and representatives of Ukraine. But they, the Transnistrian representatives, signed none of the reports. We maintain them, we do the pumping for them, we sustain Moldavskaya GRES’s technological cycle with our own money, while they make money from it.”
MGRES declined to comment
Journalists asked the MGRES administration to comment on the environmental problems in Kuchurhan and Lymanske. Although the company’s press service received the request.
At first, the press service answered the reporter’s call and acknowledged receiving the request. But then it stopped responding.
Running on coal
According to Kuchurhan’s village elder, until 2020 MGRES ran on one of the dirtiest fuels: coal.
Notably, the station received coal from the Russian Federation, and possibly also from the occupied Donbas, through Ukrainian territory, even though Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was already under way at the time. According to Moldova’s Customs Service, MGRES imported coal into Transnistria from January 2020 to October 2022.
“When there was a strong wind blowing from that direction, there was a little soot and smoke. It was just, you know, as if you could taste that smoke and soot in the air,” says Anatolii Levytskyi.
Those responsible for monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere calculate MGRES’s emissions according to the fuel used and its quality.
“Every megawatt-hour generated using natural gas releases 0.202 megatonnes of carbon dioxide. We use this ratio to calculate carbon dioxide emissions at the power station concerned. If they run on coal, the coal quota is taken into account. Coal has a different emission factor. So we calculate how much gas and how much coal was used and find the amount of carbon dioxide emissions. It is worth noting that the power station’s efficiency is below 30%. That is, if there are 10 kilowatt-hours in a cubic metre of gas, we consume less than 3 kilowatt-hours and release seven into the air. This efficiency corresponds to the station,” explains Mihai Tîrșu, director of Moldova’s Energy Institute.
Oversight is needed, but the separatists refuse
According to Ion Bulmaga, head of the Republic of Moldova’s Inspectorate for Environmental Protection, inspections are necessary to establish all the environmental problems. For political reasons, however, the Inspectorate’s staff have no access to the territory.
“We have discussed this subject. But this problem has to be resolved at a much higher level. This is a matter for the 5+2 negotiation format, which would allow us to obtain access and form joint inspection teams. But because of the events taking place on our border, this format is known to be no longer viable. As a result, we cannot conduct inspections or state our position in accordance with the legislation of the Republic of Moldova,” stresses Ion Bulmaga, head of the Republic of Moldova’s Inspectorate for Environmental Protection.
Ion Bulmaga noted that Tiraspol has a peculiar approach to compliance with environmental standards. If the unrecognised regime in Tiraspol needs permits for certain enterprises to export to the European Union, it allows inspections. If they do not need to export to the EU market, but only to Moldova, they deny the Inspectorate’s staff access to carry out inspections.
Refusing to clean the Kuchurhan Reservoir
For the past 20 years, the station’s management has not replaced the water in the reservoir, significantly worsening its quality.
Residents of Kuchurhan recall that crayfish once lived in the water and lilies bloomed. Now algal blooms and fish kills have become regular occurrences. Specialists from Ukraine’s State Environmental Inspectorate confirm these accounts. An inspection of the reservoir in 2017 found that limits for chlorides, sulphates and dry residue had been exceeded.
“When they wash their reactors, there are a lot of alkaline substances. We had a pumping station in Kuchurhan that pumped water from the estuary for irrigation. After irrigation, the soil was white from these salts,” recalls Anatolii Levytskyi.
However, besides the problem with the Kuchurhan Reservoir, Moldavskaya GRES has also created another misfortune for Ukraine. For many years, employees of the Transnistrian thermal power station dumped toxic waste on land near the Ukrainian village of Hradenytsi.
Problems with the slag dump
The slag dump, which is located on Ukrainian territory, covers approximately 130 hectares. The community cannot use this polluted land until measures are taken to dispose of hazardous substances and reclaim the area.
The slag dump is now covered in grass, so hazardous dust no longer accumulates in the air. For a long time, however, the waste dump was a source of constant danger to the lives and health of Hradenytsi residents. When the wind blew from the dump, the air was full of black dust.
As of 2003, doctors were recording an increase in cancer incidence among local residents. After several decades, the problem has still not been resolved. The full-scale war has now complicated everything.
«The problem exists. It has probably existed for 30 years; this problem is there. The residents of our village face a risk of cancer. The slag dump is on our land. There is no access to it now. But the problem caused by the slag exists for the residents of our village,” says Oleksandr Savchuk, village elder of Hradenytsi (Ukraine).
Meanwhile, Svitlana Slesarenok believes the problem must now be addressed through legal means:
“It is a legal entity. If yet another attempt to resolve this problem fails, we need to move into the legal arena. There are documents showing how much local communities have spent over this time.”
Under Russian control
The legal registration of Transnistria’s MGRES in the Republic of Moldova is a delicate issue, because Chișinău does not recognise state enterprises privatised in the so-called PMR after 1991.
In 2005, the Russian giant Inter RAO UES acquired 51% of MGRES shares. The company’s management board is currently chaired by Boris Kovalchuk, the son of a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A number of countries have imposed sanctions on Kovalchuk for supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. They include the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, EU countries and others.
“As for the Kuchurhan combined heat and power plant (MGRES — ed.), contrary to popular belief, the Republic of Moldova has not recognised the privatisation of this enterprise. The status of an economic operator with which you cooperate is one thing; the status of the privatisation of this enterprise, like that of other enterprises, is another. We have not recognised the privatisation of any enterprise in the Transnistrian region that existed in the Soviet period. We therefore make a very clear distinction between enterprises newly established after 1991, mostly small and medium-sized companies, and privatised enterprises that, as I have already said, were unlawfully appropriated after 1991,” says Oleg Serebrian, the Republic of Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration.
MGRES’s future must be decided
Oleh Rubel, a researcher at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, stresses that the environmental problems resulting from MGRES’s operation cannot be considered separately from Transnistria’s political problems. The situation is complicated by the fact that the problems associated with the Moldavskaya power station’s operation are transboundary and affect the interests of several countries: Ukraine, Moldova and the Russian Federation.
By announcing their intention to join the European Union, Ukraine and Moldova have undertaken obligations to resolve environmental issues. Moldavskaya GRES is already so technically outdated that the question of its closure or comprehensive modernisation arises. At present, it is important to establish a monitoring station meeting European requirements in order to obtain accurate, reliable information on the environmental impact of Moldavskaya GRES’s operation.
“The energy system we see today clearly no longer meets modern requirements in terms of technological and technical approaches, nor does it meet any environmental or political requirements for development. I believe a very thorough assessment must be made of the remaining service life of this station. Several options for repurposing it should be proposed,” said Oleh Rubel.
At the same time, according to Mihai Tîrșu, director of Moldova’s Energy Institute, MGRES currently plays a key role in the Republic of Moldova’s energy infrastructure:
“All right, suppose they close the power station. Where will we get electricity? We have found ourselves in a situation where we cannot function without them. Especially since our energy system is very closely connected to Ukraine through Transnistria.”
On the hook
In summer, MGRES generates approximately 90–95% of the electricity the Republic of Moldova needs. In winter, because combined heat and power plants in territory controlled by Chișinău operate, electricity purchases from MGRES fall to 65–70%.
Until autumn 2022, the Moldovan state company Energocom purchased 67% of its required electricity from MGRES. The remaining 30% came from Ukrainian producers, specifically Energoatom and Ukrhydroenergo. Everything changed in October 2022, when Russia began bombing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
“Ukraine developed an energy shortage. As a result, the Ukrainian companies informed us that they could not fulfil their commitments. At that point, we began purchasing from Romanian producers, as Moldova’s and Romania’s energy systems had been synchronised,” says Yevhen Bots, head of the supply department at Energocom (Moldova).
The only electricity import line from Romania to the Republic of Moldova runs through MGRES: Isaccea–Vulcănești–Chișinău. On 15 and 23 November 2022, following Russian bombardments of Odesa Oblast, this line failed and Moldova was left in darkness.
“If something happens at MGRES, the line will be disconnected and the Republic of Moldova will be left without electricity — exactly what happened in November when Ukraine’s energy infrastructure was bombed. We had two outages: one partial and one complete,” emphasises Yevhen Bots.
Does Moldova support MGRES?
The Republic of Moldova pays Moldavskaya GRES approximately 20 million dollars a month for the electricity consumed.
“We currently have a contract until the end of September at a price of 66 dollars per megawatt-hour. Each month we agree with MoldGRES on the volumes they will supply, usually between 300,000 and 320,000 megawatt-hours. Multiplying that by a price of 60 euros gives almost 18–20 million euros a month,” notes Yevhen Bots.
MGRES does not pay Moldovagaz for the fuel it consumes. The scheme works as follows: MGRES pays Tiraspoltransgaz-Transnistria for gas, and that company transfers the money to a special account opened at the PMR’s central bank.
The money is then transferred to the budget of the separatist regime in Tiraspol. As of mid-August this year, Tiraspoltransgaz’s debt to Moldovagaz stood at around 10 billion dollars.
The Republic of Moldova participates in a scheme through which Gazprom finances the existence of the pro-Russian separatist region. At the same time, the cost of electricity for Moldova is almost 50% below the market price:
“We purchase electricity from Moldavskaya GRES at around 50% of the prices in the region. So if we turn to producers in Romania, it is at least 90 euros. If we go to the exchange because producers cannot give us the quantity we need, the supply ranges from 100 to 300 euros depending on the regional situation,” says Yevhen Bots.
Plans to end the dependence
To end its energy dependence on Transnistria, Chișinău has begun building a direct Vulcănești–Chișinău line that will take Moldavskaya GRES out of operation. According to the project, construction is due to finish in 2025.
“The 2025 deadline, mid-2025, is realistic, because in recent months we have negotiated very intensively with the contractor to commit both them and ourselves to meeting these deadlines,” explains Ruslan Surugiu, director of the Consolidated Unit for the Implementation and Monitoring of Energy Projects (Moldova).
However, resolving the environmental problems in Ukraine and in the occupied territory of Moldova caused by MGRES’s activities still requires considerable effort.
The material was created with the support of journalismfund europe.