In a country with over 300 days of sunshine every year, and with the global move towards green energy you’d expect Croatia to be a leader in solar energy. You’d be wrong. Incredibly with all that sunshine, free energy, less than 0.5 percent of Croatia’s annual energy supply is provided by solar energy.

“Slovenia has five times more solar capacities than Croatia, whilst Greece has fifty times more. It would be very good for all our sectors to become aware of the fact that roofs of hotels, camps and other tourist facilities are ideal for solar collectors and photovoltaic cells as well as for LED lighting,” stated Greenpeace Croatia a full six years ago. But it would appear that nothing much has changed.

Breaking down the energy supply of Croatia in 2022 fossil fuels are still the leading source of electricity. A whopping 53 percent of Croatia’s energy supply in 2022 came from fossil fuels, either from home-grown or imported energy, and Croatia imported 2.12 TWh of electricity. If the solar energy industry was developed, as it should have been years ago, Croatia could become completely energy independent. In second place was a renewable source, hydropower, which accounted for 28.39 percent. In fact, the whole of the Dubrovnik-Neretva County is supplied by hydro-electric power. The nuclear power plant in Krško provided 14.42 percent. Wind power is growing fast in Croatia, considerably faster than solar power, and accounted for 12.49 percent of energy last year.

And solar plants across Croatia generated a total of 79 GWh, or a mere 0.43 percent of all available energy, putting Croatia at Europe’s bottom by solar energy utilization.