Enel's power plant for Albania

Italian power giant Enel SpA announced on Monday plans to build a coal-fired generating plant in Albania.

Enel’s CEO and general manager, Fulvio Conti, and Genc Ruli, Albania’s Minister for the Economy and Energy, signed on Monday a memorandum of understanding for the development of the Albanian energy sector.

“Enel is very interested in the markets of south-eastern Europe, which have excellent prospects for growth and a need for new generating capacity”, Conti said after signing the document.

Conti went on to say that “in this context, today’s agreement is very important, thanks to Albania’s strategic position in the region and the strong institutional support for this international-calibre project of strategic interest for the country.”

The Italian company plans to build a thermal power plant, fuelled by imported coal with an estimated capacity of approximately 1,300 MW, which would supply electricity to both the Italian and Albanian markets.

The memorandum was signed on the day Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi was visiting Tirana at the head of a delegation of Italian business executives. To read more, see http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/6729/

Enel is Italy's biggest power company and Europe's second-largest utility for installed capacity. It produces and sells electricity and gas across Europe, as well as North and South America.

Albania has been suffering a succession of severe energy crises in the last few years, due its total dependence on hydro-power for the generation of electricity, an obsolete distribution network and growing demand from an increasingly-prosperous population.

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, has expressed its concern that the energy crisis will have an adverse effect on Albania’s economic growth.

“The energy crisis presents a great danger for Albania. It affects all medium-term economic indicators, and could create a shortfall in revenue in this year’s budget”, it warned in a press release in August.

According to the Ministry of Finance, power shortages in 2006 cost Albania one per cent of GDP growth.