Environmental Technologies

The most pressing issues in Albania concern the lack of modern environmental technologies particularly for handling municipal waste, rural water supply and sanitation and wastewater treatment. Areas, which present an opportunity, are environmentally friendly tourism development, repurposing of abandoned industrial sites and energy sector investments.

The three main areas, which present opportunities are:

Water supply coverage. In rural areas water supply coverage has increased from 57 per cent in 2011 to 63 per cent in 2015, however in urban areas it has remained constant at about 90 per cent.

Sewerage system coverage. Sewerage system coverage differs significantly between urban and rural areas with an overall coverage of about 51% on a country level. Albania’s eight urban wastewater treatment plants only has the capacity to cover around 25% of the urban populations. However, the issue of cost recovery and limited technical capacities has rendered three of them idle.

Non-revenue water. On average, 67 per cent of drinking water produced is lost or not paid for.

UNECE, 2018. 3rd Environmental Performance Review of Albania.