Parliament decided: Thermal Power Plants will Operate without Restrictions until 2038. Bulgaria may Lose a lot of Money

The thermal power plants will operate without restrictions until 2038, and Bulgaria is abandoning its commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by the end of 2025.

The general draft decision of the energy parliamentary committee passed in the hall with 187 votes "in favor", 2 "against" (WCC) and 9 "abstentions" (5 from DB and 4 from WCC).

Early this morning, the deputies from the energy committee gathered for an extraordinary meeting, during which they united around the general draft decision. It also stipulates that battery money is halved and the rest goes to a grant scheme. The money to develop the geothermal energy opportunities will go to remediation and the other half to a grant scheme. In addition, the Council of Ministers will redirect all the saved sums on completed projects from the Recovery and Resilience Plan to the energy renovation project of the residential building stock. Reform 11, related to the separation of the ownership of the two operators Bulgartransgaz and ESO from the corporate structure of BEH, is also abolished.

The draft decision obliges the acting Deputy Prime Minister Atanas Pekanov to make a proposal for a change in the Recovery Plan in the "Energy" part and to reach agreement and a preliminary positive assessment by the EC by March 31.

However, the draft decision does not guarantee that the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) will be renegotiated. If the European Commission does not agree to the changes, then Bulgaria may lose all the planned funds from the "energy" part of the National Energy Policy, explained to OFFNews the Deputy Chairman of the Energy Commission in the National Assembly, Radoslav Ribarski from WCC. According to him, because of the war in Ukraine and the subsequent...