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The plan to build a new coal plant close to the capital Prishtina has been proposed since the early 2000s. The original proposal was a 2000 MW unit that would export energy, but plans faded due to lack of investors. New Kosovo was later planned to have a capacity of 600 MW, and has been promoted by the US government through the World Bank, which is interested in supporting the project. After Kosovo became a member of the [[EBRD]] in December 2012, the bank declared its interest in potentially financing the new plant in its first Kosovo Country Strategy.<ref>[http://bankwatch.org/sites/default/files/briefing-WesternBalkans-Coal-24Jan2014.pdf "Western Balkans: 'cheap' lignite plants built now will cost heavily later,"] Bankwatch, April 2014.</ref>
On November 23, 2015, Kosovo’s minister of economic development, Blerand Stavileci, announced the latest version of the plant. The new design reduces the size of the plant from 600MW to 500MW. The economic development minister states construction is to start in late 2016 or early 2017 and will take four to five years to complete.<refname=st>Sanzillo, Tom and David Schlissel,[http://kosid.org/file/repository/The_Proposed_New_Kosovo_Power_Plant_Jan_2016_1.pdf "The Proposed New Kosovo Power Plant: An Unneccessary Burden at an Unreasonable Price,"] Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, pp.3-4, January 2016</ref>
==History==
The World Bank countered in a [http://bit.ly/rK9Oxj report] stating that the coal plant will cost twice as much as first estimated, but still advocated its construction.<Ref name=duke/>
In 2016 a report by IEEFA on the costs of the proposed plant found that:<ref name=st/>
*The average Kosovar household would pay 12.9 percent of its annual income for electricity, twice what most European households pay;
*Low- to middle-income household in Kosovo would pay 18 percent of its annual income for electricity;
*Very low-income households would pay 39.7 percent of their income for electricity; and
*Retail electricity costs would increase by 33 to 50 percent.
===Environmental Assessment and Bids===
