The Slovak Republic is situated in the Central Europe. It borders on Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. The country’s area is 49 036 km2, so Slovakia belongs to smaller country of EU. There are 5,4 millions of inhabitants living in Slovakia by now. The capital city is Bratislava. Slovakia consists of 8 municipal regions in the level of NUTS III. The main parameters of regions are described in the database table.
Territory of Slovakia belongs to the mild climatic zone. The climate is determined by a great variety of climatic conditions resulting from changing latitude and elevation differences. Slovakia’s agricultural land area is 2 434 749 ha, of which 1 430 594 ha (58.76 %) is arable land. The forest land covers 2 004 927 ha.
Almost 90% of total primary sources (PES) in SR is realizing through the purchase out of internal market EU. The only important domestic energy source is brown coal, because the own crude oil and natural gas production is inconsiderable. For this reason an importance of renewable energy sources is still growing.
| [PJ] |
Fuels |
Primary heat/electricity |
Total |
|
| Solid |
liquid |
gaseous |
Nuclear |
Renewable |
|
| Primary production |
51,6 |
9,8 |
6,1 |
199,3 |
15,0 |
281,9 |
|
| Imports |
15,8 |
293,3 |
240,4 |
31,4 |
549,5 |
|
| Exports |
-1,7 |
-219,9 |
-35,0 |
-38,1 |
-256,6 |
|
| Stock changes |
-17,6 |
|
| Gross inland consumption |
206,0 |
137,3 |
233,0 |
207,6 |
783,9 |
|
In long term view (by the year 2 030) it is assumed, that the main role in satisfaction of consumption will feature higher utilization of nuclear fuel, natural gas and renewable energy sources.
Coal is still a basic fuel resource. Almost a third of the total primary energy consumption is based on coal. Coal is predominantly used in production of electricity and heat for district heating. Most of it (79 %) is domestic brown coal and the rest is imported hard or brown coal. Without subsidies, domestic brown coal cannot compete with imported hard coal or gas. About 200 mil. SKK per year in the late 1990s was the total state funding to the domestic coal sector (direct price production subsidies, retraining, early retirement programmes to miners).
Gas consumption is continually growing and reached a status when more than 90 % of the population has access to the gas distribution network. According to the results of last population census in 2001: 77, 5 % of family houses, 62,8 % of flats and 68,7 % in other kinds of buildings (Statistical Office of Slovak republic, 2002) have a pipeline connection to the gas distribution system. As we can see from the statistic data provide the natural gas supply network is very dense in Slovak republic nowadays.
Annual consumption of natural gas is cca 7 mld. m3. Gas supply is almost totally dependent on imports from Russia. Domestic production covers less than 3 % of consumption. In next time it’s assumed slow grow of natural gas consumption, mainly following the growth of consumption in industry and in heat and electricity production.
The vast majority of the electricity generated in Slovakia in present is generated in nuclear power plants (55 %), slightly more than 30 % was generated in the steam and industrial power plants. The proportion of the electricity generated in the water power plants was 11.5 % in 2003. In the year 2002 there were 4 156 GWh of generated electricity exported abroad. In the 2003 Slovak republic power plants have exported 2 255 GWh of electricity.
