Republic of Belarus Proposed Energy Efficiency Project Environmental Assessment
|
|  Yüklə 2.11 Mb.
|
Baseline conditionsPhysical context Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Central Europe with a population of 9.8 million people. The country has four distinctive geographic regions. The north has mainly lakes and hills, and is covered with forests. The east is an elevated plain area. A lowland area of rivers and swamps occupies the south of the country, and the west is an agricultural region with mixed conifer forests. The total land area is 207,598 km2. Twenty seven percent of the country is arable land. Forest and woodland cover 38%; and meadows and pastures occupy 16% of the land area. Four percent of the total area is marshland. Belarus is relatively poor in natural resources, except for water, forestry and agricultural resources. Peat is plentiful and is used as household fuel. In general, the local energy resources, mainly oil, covers only 5% of the Belarus’s energy needs. Belarus has a temperate continental climate influenced by the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The average annual precipitation ranges from 546 mm to 693 mm. The average temperature varies from 17.5 oC in July to -7 oC in January, also in the north even -40 oC temperatures have been registered. Air Considering air pollution, out of the 1,415,500 tons of total air emissions in 2005, 1,013,900 tons (72%) came from the transport sector, and 401,600 (28%) from stationary sources. The largest single pollutant from stationary sources was CO (26%), followed by volatile organic compounds (18%) and SO2 (18%), NOx (16%) and hydrocarbons (8%) Industrial activities are concentrated in urban areas where they emit pollution into the air. The biggest air polluters in Belarusian cities are power plants, chemical factories and manufacturing enterprises. Emission of conventional pollutants has diminished by 58 % between 1990 and 2005. This reduction in air pollution can be attributed to the economic decline between 1990 and 1995, changes in GDP structure and a shift to more natural gas in the energy supply pattern and improvements in energy efficiency and conservation. Baseline air quality data for Borisov and Mogilev, taken from EIA reports for the Borisov and Mogilev sites, are presented below. Borisov. According to the EIA report prepared for the Borisov site in 2008, the following baseline air pollutants’ concentration was registered in Borisov:
Mogilev. In Mogilev, the following baseline concentration, presented in a respective EIA study, was registered:
Water Belarus is a relatively water rich country and available water resources are sufficient to meet both current and future demands. Groundwater resources are abundant and a large portion of the country’s needs is met by groundwater supplies. Water abstracted from surface water bodies is used mainly for industry, particularly the thermal power industry. During the last few years (2000 – 2005), total water use has decreased by 6 percent. The amount of water used for the household needs decreased by 4%, while industrial use has fallen by 17 percent, continuing a trend that began in the early 1990s. In industrial urban areas, ground water is polluted mainly in production grounds, landfills and points of leakage from industrial sites. Surface waters are exposed to chemical pollution from wastewater discharge, urban and industrial areas run-off, from motor transport, landfills and pollutant fallout. Municipal wastewater treatment facilities often receive untreated or unsatisfactory treated wastewaters from industrial plants. Waste Industrial solid waste accounts more than 90% of all the waste generated in the country. Almost all non-recycled industrial waste goes to landfills and ponds belonging to enterprises, with the rest sent to municipal waste dumpsites or left on the enterprises’ premises. Municipal solid waste accounts less than 10% of all the waste generated. The waste recycling rate is low, around 10%. Non-recycled waste is sent to municipal waste landfills. Over 40% of the landfills have reached its limit capacities. In addition, municipal, industrial and hazardous waste is often been disposed of together, creating dangerous toxic conditions.
The project was initially placed in the environmental screening category ‘B’ under the provisions of the World Bank Operational Policy 4.01, ‘Environmental Assessment’. The environmental review shows that the project will have predominantly positive impacts on the environment and human health from reduced air pollution at the national level from reduced amount of fossil fuels burned in the country. The anticipated adverse environmental impacts will occur during both, construction and operation stages and are likely to be site-specific; and it is not expected that the project will affect significantly human populations or involve significant conversion or degradation of natural habitats, or have significant negative impact on forest ecosystems. Therefore, the environmental impact study confirms that the proposed EEP falls under the Category ‘B’ according to the provisions of the World Bank Operational Policy 4.01, ‘Environmental Assessment’. |