The Minister of Environment and Water Asen Lichev held a meeting with Dr Lachezar Kostov, senior research fellow at the Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Vice-Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.

The aim of the meeting was to consult on issues related to the state of the energy sector. An alarming trend of price increase for gas and electricity in Europe was reported.

During the meeting, the two discussed options that would allow our country to respond rapidly to this trend. The issue of limiting the percentage of electricity exports was raised in the first place. It was noted that in the distribution of electricity produced by the Kozloduy NPP, the national interest should be protected as a priority in the country’s energy mix and electricity is to be planned for export subsequently – following the definition that the future of the energy mix is ​​to combine the best techniques and technologies with the socio-economic tolerability of the transition to a climate-neutral economy.

The two confirmed the need to look for alternatives to coal-based power generation and to put on the agenda issues, such as: the elimination of the existing contradiction between the regulated and the electricity free market; the construction of additional balancing capacities such as pumped-storage hydroelectric power plants (PAVEC), which repeatedly use the energy of the water mass to produce electricity; the use of the kinetic energy of the waters of the Danube River; the use of the hydropower potential in the upper reaches of the Arda River.

It was noted that from 2007 until now, the issue of limiting the production of electricity from coal has been formally on the agenda, without any real actions by the government to avoid the threat of an energy crisis. Now the explicit condition set by the European Commission in relation to the adoption of the National Plan for Recovery and Sustainability requires to proceed with the years-long delayed decisions, and the problem escalates due to the “awareness” of this imperative requirement by all responsible institutions in the country, as well as by the operators of the large combustion plants, such as the coal-fired power plants.