Pljevlja Municipality

Pljevlja embodies toxic symbiosis: the relationship that sustains also destroys. The municipality's coal mine (1,100+ employees) and thermal power plant (158 employees) produce 40% of Montenegro's electricity, making coal-generated power the country's top export at €200 million in 2023. But that same infrastructure kills an estimated 625 people annually and causes 1,162 cases of childhood bronchitis, with 22% of all deaths in this north-eastern border town attributable to air pollution. The World Health Organization ranks Pljevlja among Europe's ten most polluted cities. On December 13, 2025, sulfur dioxide levels hit 805 µg/m³—multiple times the legal limit—shortly after the plant reconnected to the grid following maintenance. You cannot shut down what keeps the lights on, but you cannot breathe what keeps the lights on.

Yugoslav planners commissioned the 225 MW Pljevlja I plant in 1982 to exploit local lignite deposits, integrating mine and power generation in a single industrial ecosystem. The logic was autarkic efficiency: Montenegro extracts its own coal, generates its own electricity, reduces dependence on imported energy. This model functioned adequately when Yugoslavia's federal structure distributed costs and benefits. The 1990s transition concentrated both in Pljevlja: the municipality bears pollution mortality while Montenegro's government captures electricity export revenue. The Energy Community Treaty allows limited operating hours; Pljevlja has exceeded that quota since late 2020, running illegally because Montenegro lacks alternative baseload capacity. The draft National Energy and Climate Plan published January 2025 proposed phasing out coal by 2035, but May 2025 confirmed operation until 2041—a six-year extension that reflects infrastructure reality over climate commitments.

The municipality cannot diversify. Over 1,000 direct jobs depend on coal extraction and combustion, in a region with no alternative employers offering comparable wages. Closing the plant means unemployment rates above 30% unless government invests in transition industries that do not yet exist. EU accession requires meeting air quality standards that the coal plant makes impossible, but accession also requires reliable electricity supply that closing the plant would jeopardize. The municipality contributes €1.3 billion in health costs annually—over twice Montenegro's entire health budget—while generating €200 million in export revenue. The arithmetic suggests closure, but the politics of unemployment and energy security guarantee delay.

By 2026, Pljevlja's residents will continue dying from respiratory disease at rates exceeding war casualties, while Brussels negotiates the year—2035, 2041, perhaps 2045—when Montenegro can afford to stop trading lungs for kilowatts. Parasitoid relationships end when the host dies or the parasite relocates. Pljevlja's coal will run out eventually, but the question is whether that happens before or after the population does.