The necessity of the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as formulated in the Kyoto Protocol, imposes the need for improving environmental aspects of existing thermal power plants operation. Improvements can be reached either by efficiency increment or by implementation of emission reduction measures. Investments in refurbishment of existing plant components or in plant upgrading by flue gas desulphurization, by primary and secondary measures of nitrogen oxides reduction, or by biomass co-firing, are usually accompanied by modernisation of thermal power plant instrumentation and control system including sensors, equipment diagnostics and advanced controls. Impact of advanced control solutions implementation depends on technical characteristics and status of existing instrumentation and control systems as well as on design characteristics and actual conditions of installed plant components. Evaluation of adequacy of implementation of advanced control concepts is especially important in Western Balkan region where thermal power plants portfolio is rather diversified in terms of size, type and commissioning year and where generally poor maintenance and lack of investments in power generation sector resulted in high greenhouse gases emissions and low efficiency of plants in operation. This paper is intended to present possibilities of implementation of advanced control concepts, and particularly those based on artificial intelligence, in selected thermal power plants in order to increase plant efficiency and to lower pollutants emissions and to comply with environmental quality standards prescribed in large combustion plant directive. [Acknowledgements. This paper has been created within WBalkICT - Supporting Common RTD actions in WBCs for developing Low Cost and Low Risk ICT based solutions for TPPs Energy Efficiency increasing, SEE-ERA.NET plus project in cooperation among partners from IPA SA - Romania, University of Zagreb - Croatia and Vinca Institute from Serbia and. The project has initiated a strong scientific cooperation, with innovative approaches, high scientific level, in order to correlate in an optimal form, using ICT last generation solutions, the procedures and techniques from fossil fuels burning processes thermodynamics, mathematical modelling, modern methods of flue gases analysis, combustion control, Artificial Intelligence Systems with focus on Expert Systems category.]