A joint Romanian-Bulgarian project to build the Turnu Magurele-Nikopol hydropower plant (HPP) on the Danube River will have negative economic, social and environmental consequences, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Bulgaria, CEE Bankwatch and 36 other organisations said in a joint statement on September 18.

The 840-MW hydropower project, which was initially drafted in the 1980s and has been on hold since then, was revived in 2022 as part of the efforts of the two countries to increase the share of renewable energy and secure more independence. However, critics say it will put villages along the Danube at risk, and could endanger nuclear power plants situated on the river. 

The project was included in the List of Renewable Energy Cross-border Projects (CB RES list) under the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility for Energy (CEF Energy) in August.

The EC said the plant will use the hydropower potential of the Danube River while securing environmental sustainability, renewable energy generation and responding to community and industrial needs.

“The European Commission has added an old hydropower project for a hydropower plant on the Danube to its list of priority infrastructure investments, despite the great danger of harming communities, economies and valuable ecosystems along the river and violating EU directives,” the NGOs said.

They added that the implementation of the project would also cost a significant amount of money and will threaten the survival of critically endangered species.

The environmentalists called on the EC to remove the project from its priority list as it would put at risk significant agricultural areas and hundreds of villages along a 280-km stretch of the river.

“The dam is expected to cause flooding and deterioration of the quality of agricultural land, homes and fish ponds, which will affect local communities in both countries. The project will lead to the need to relocate port and residential infrastructure, disrupt agricultural production, fisheries, inland waterway transport and tourism, and may also create additional risks for nuclear energy,” the NGOs said.

Both Bulgaria's Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and Romania's Cernavoda NPP are situated by the Danube and use the river for cooling. 

In addition, the project is expected to cause tens of kilometres of landslides along the Bulgarian coast, which could be critical for several settlements, which was the main reason the project was rejected by Bulgaria back in the 1980s.