Residents of Gornja Brezna Raise Concerns Over Energy Infrastructure – Alcasar Energy is attempting to forcibly seize our land

Residents of Gornja Brezna have issued a statement to the media highlighting plans by Gordana Radović—advisor to former Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić—to build a wind farm in Plužine. They note that this is just one of several energy projects slated for inclusion in the amendments to the Plužine Municipal Spatial Plan (PUP), initiated by the local government, which opened for public comment yesterday and will run for only 15 days.

Residents of Gornja Brezna: Alcasar Energy Enters Our Property Without Permission and Measures What They Plan to Take

Alcazar Energy Seeks Public Interest Status for Wind Power Grid – Will Montenegrin Villagers Lose Their Land?

The residents say they “have every reason to suspect” that the PUP amendments were driven by private interests, aiming to permit a host of privately owned renewable‐energy installations. “The PUP for Plužine,” they add, “has been drafted for the benefit of a few individuals rather than for the citizens of Piva and its sustainable development.”

“These renewable‐energy installations—wind and solar farms and high‐voltage transmission lines—from which their developers stand to reap tens or even hundreds of millions of euros, are being mapped into some of the most scenic villages, where residents have for years invested in eco-tourism, agriculture, and livestock farming. Aside from Gornja Brezna, the village of Orah is another example, where Ms. Gordana Radović’s jointly owned company ‘Solpeco’ plans to erect an energy facility that would irreversibly destroy this village’s enormous tourism potential.”

According to company registry records, Gordana Radović owns 25 percent of Solpeco d.o.o. (headquartered in Nikšić), which is registered to generate electric power. The other 25 percent stakes belong to Ranka Radović, Stevan Knežević, and Vanja Maksimović.

“The former advisor to PM Krivokapić also holds a 50 percent share in another power‐generation company, Piva Energy d.o.o., with the remaining half owned by Milijana Bakrač—related to Staniša Bakrač, owner of the ‘Bast’ company in Nikšić. Mr. Bakrač previously privatized the Brezna sawmill, only for it soon afterward to go bankrupt, leaving the workers unemployed.”

Registry data show Piva Energy shares the same registered address and contact email as Bakrač’s Bast company. Both firms were founded with a nominal capital of just €2 each.

Gordana Radović first ran as the lead candidate of the “Ne damo Nikšić” list in the January 2021 municipal elections in Nikšić, while serving as PM Krivokapić’s economic advisor; she was dismissed from that advisory role in June 2021.

“Notably, it was Ms. Radović whom the Arab firm ‘Alcazar Energy’ and its Montenegrin partners engaged to negotiate with us, the residents of Gornja Brezna, in an attempt to acquire our land for symbolic compensation so that they could build a transmission line linking their wind farm to the Brezna substation. When that effort failed, they sent their surveyors—without our knowledge or consent—to measure our property and seize what they needed. Meanwhile, Alcazar Energy formally petitioned the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property (headed by Slaven Radunović) to declare the project a matter of ‘public interest.’ At that point, the Montenegrin state—just as it did for the private Krnovo Green Energy under the Milo Đukanović administration, with police support—could expropriate our land and hand it to a private investor who would reap million-euro profits. The very notion of ‘public interest’ in the Krnovo case is shown to us by the fact that last year that wind farm generated revenues exceeding €20 million, employed a single worker at minimum wage, and was subsidized by tens of millions of euros from Montenegrin taxpayers under renewable‐energy incentives.”

The statement warns the community will not accept the “scenario” quietly prepared without its knowledge or input—one that, they say, spells the destruction of their village and their future.

“The draft amendments to the Plužine PUP were conceived with a single aim: to map in these energy installations that will bring enormous riches to their owners and all actors involved. In those plans, we who live here—on land our grandparents tilled with their sweat and blood—do not even exist as a statistical error, a comma, or a period. There’s no mention of us: our children, our houses, our fields, our lives. Since that is the case, we warn everyone who ‘doesn’t see us’ that they will not be allowed to run roughshod over us.”

They conclude by vowing a visible, vocal presence at the public forum on Friday.

“This PUP must be withdrawn and redrafted with full citizen participation—residents of Piva and all who cherish Piva as a jewel of nature and a home for eco-tourism, agriculture, and livestock farming. That is the future we want, and one that benefits us all.”