"Europe plans to invest €240 billion in power transmission," state agency Hina said on Wednesday, citing Jutarnji List daily's Wednesday issue, adding that "a new grid would be built to include Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with two segments involving Croatia."

The two segments of the new grid involving Croatia include a new 400-kilowatt interconnection between the village of Ernestinovo in eastern Croatia and Sombor, Serbia, and another a 400-kilowatt interconnection between the central Croatian region of Lika and the city of Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“As part of its efforts to reduce its dependency on Russian gas, the European Union plans, with the help of countries that are currently not members of the bloc, to increase the capacity of its electricity transmission network by 2040 through 141 investment projects collectively estimated to be worth €240 billion,” Hina cited Jutarnji List, which cited the plan published on the website of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E),

According to the plan, the capacity of power transmission lines in Europe would be “increased by 142 gigawatt” with 43,000 kilometers of new transmission lines added, which is expected to create 1.6 million jobs. Hina did not say what is the current capacity of European transmission lines.

The idea behind the plan is to help connect the growing number of producers of solar and wind power to the power grid, as part of a larger strategy to reduce natural gas as a fuel used in power plants or for heating. This is also in line with the so-called European Green Deal which aims to cut EU’s carbon dioxide emissions by 14 metric tonnes per year, by 2030. Hina did not say how much emissions the EU produces today.

The plan should reduce gas-based power generation in the EU by 9 TWh by 2030, and by 75 TWh by 2040, equivalent to 14 percent of the EU’s gas-based electricity generation in 2021, said ENTSO-E, a network of 38 European electricity transmission operators.

Among them are also operators from non-EU countries, “which is important for the investments Croatia’s state operator HOPS plans to implement as part of the ENTSO-E plan,” Hina said.

Hina did not cite the estimated value of the two proposed projects involving Croatia and its neighbors.