This week, the Eurasian Climate Brief team heads to the Balkans, Bulgaria, to look into the cracks of the European Union's carbon market (a.k.a., EU ETS).

In July 2021, an investigation by Eleonora Vio and Daniela Sala for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found that two Bulgarian power plants appeared to have under-declared their carbon emissions. If true, this would mean the EU ETS would have lost around 30 million euros in emissions tax. Months later in February, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) raided dozens of offices within the country.

Key to the investigation is the company tasked with verifying the emission reports,  which appears to be connected to Hristo Kovachki, the country's secretive energy tycoon and alleged owner of the coal power plants.

Kovachki, whose empire almost crumbled in February, now appears to be off the hook, while the EPPO investigation has ground to a halt. So, is this the justice that awaits Europe's carbon fraudsters? And could it be that others are gaming the system as you read these lines?

To answer these questions, energy journalist Evgeni Ahmadzai reports from Sofia and the Bobov Dol thermal power plant. Natalie Sauer then talks ETS corruption with him and senior investigative journalist Atanas Tchobanov. 

The EPPO has not responded to our requests for comment.

For more on Eleonora Vio's work, visit her website and Twitter account @elevio64. Daniela Sala's own portfolio can be consulted here and Twitter channel found @alasaleinad. Ivaylo Stanchev, a staff journalist at Kapital.bg, also contributed to the investigation. 

The Eurasian Climate Brief is a podcast dedicated to climate issues in the region stretching from Eastern Europe to Russia down to the Caucasus and Central Asia.

This episode is supported by n-ost, The Moscow Times and the European Climate Foundation, and made by:

• Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and English-language editor for The Conversation.  A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
• Evgeni Ahmadzai is an energy journalist for Kapital.bg.
• Atanas Chobanov is the co-founder of Bivol.bg, an investigative outlet exposing the state-mafia nexus in Bulgaria. A veteran expert in corruption, Tchobanov has contributed to many cross-border investigation cases concerning hidden assets in Bulgaria and abuse of EU money.

Production by the www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk

Climate change affects almost all sectors of human societies and life. One underrated and underreported consequence of the climate crisis is taking so-called climate migration - displacement due to climate change. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) predicts the number of "environmental migrants" in 2050 to be between 25 million and 1 billion.

To find out more about this topic and, in particular, about one of the most affected regions - Central Asia - Angelina and Boris spoke to Viviane Clement, Senior Climate Change Specialist with the World Bank's Climate Change Group, Ikrom Mamadov, Director of the Youth Group on the Protection of the Environment and the National Director of the Ecological Network of Tajikistan, and Kira Vinke, Head of the Center for Climate and Foreign Policy at the German Council of Foreign Relations (DGAP).

This episode is supported by n-ost, The Moscow Times and the European Climate Foundation, and made by:

• Boris Schneider, European Journalism Project Manager at Clean Energy Wire (CLEW). Prior he has worked as a specialist on Eastern European climate and energy topics, amongst others for n-ost and the German Economic Team. He graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a M. Sc. in Economics and is interested in the intersection of political economy and ecology in Eurasia.
• Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist originally from Russia, now based in Berlin. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting. Angelina is a climate projects coordinator with n-ost, environmental projects coordinator with Dialogue For Understanding e. V,  editor of the magazine "Environment and Rights" and an expert with the Ukraine War Environemntal Consequences Work Group. 

Production by the www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian civil society has faced increasing repression at home. The environmental movement is no exception. While they kept communication channels open before the war, feeding the outside world precious data on the state of Russia's forests, permafrost and Arctic, large mainstream NGOs such as WWF, Greenpeace and Bellona have all been declared undesirable organisations in recent months. This makes their nation-level work near to impossible. 

Angelina Davydova and Boris Schneider spoke to Vitaly Servetnik, a campaigner at Russia's Friends of the Earth and the Russian Socio-Ecological Union, about the situation, as wildfires continue to engulf eastern Siberia.  Unflappable, Servetnik maintains that environmentalists within the country are as defiant and creative as ever. 

This episode is supported by n-ost, The Moscow Times and the European Climate Foundation, and made by:

• Boris Schneider, European Journalism Project Manager at Clean Energy Wire (CLEW). Prior he has worked as a specialist on Eastern European climate and energy topics, amongst others for n-ost and the German Economic Team. He graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a M. Sc. in Economics and is interested in the intersection of political economy and ecology in Eurasia.
• Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist originally from Russia, now based in Berlin. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting. Angelina is a climate projects coordinator with n-ost, environmental projects coordinator with Dialogue For Understanding e. V,  editor of the magazine "Environment and Rights" and an expert with the Ukraine War Environemntal Consequences Work Group. 

Production by the www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk