Coal-Fired Plant in Kosovo Tests World Bank Clean-Air Pledge

The smokestacks at Kosovo’s oldest power station tower over decaying buildings and a tangle of rusty pipes, polluting the Balkan countryside and posing the first test of the World Bank’s pledge to avoid coal.

The half-century-old plant near the capital, Pristina, produces a third of the nation’s electricity by burning lignite, a type of coal that emits more greenhouse gases than any other fossil fuel and is blamed for hundreds of premature deaths a year in Kosovo. Chronic power outages hobble the country’s $7 billion economy, the poorest in Europe after Moldova.