“I dream of 100 thousand roofs in Bulgaria to install 100 thousand photovoltaic systems of 1 KW.” This was stated during the forum “How to be energy independent?” by the chairman of the Public Environmental Center for Sustainable Development (PECSD), Ilian Iliev. According to him, investing in such a dream is not impossible – an installation with similar capacity costs approx 5000 BGN. “However, I do not see how 100,000 people in Bulgaria will want to become administrative slaves. I’ve been like that since 2007 “Iliev said, referring to two small photovoltaic projects on residential buildings he works for. The surplus of produced energy from renewable sources (EVI) is obliged to be sold to Energo-pro. The legislator has pushed small EVI producers into a bureaucratic scheme of submitting monthly personal documents, protocols and invoices to the energy intermediary and the state. “If you miss filing, the fine is several times higher than your original investment,” Iliev announced. “In the beginning, the energy industry tended to do this quarterly. But then the state intervened … “said the chairman of PECSD. According to him, the situation in the small producers sector has been deteriorating every year since 2007.
Nowadays people who want to install renewable energy systems for their own needs are going through a long and difficult legal, bureaucratic and technical process. Until the administrative framework will changed do not expect people to invest in EVI, says Ilian Iliev.
Facilitating this process and decentralizing the energy system can help to tackle energy poverty and air pollution. In the longer term, the effects that can be expected are the stability of our energy system and national energy security. The use of more renewable resources is also a measure to reduce emissions and tackle climate change.
An indicator of the effectiveness of EVI for economic development is the fact that one of the most developed economies in the world, the United States, invests nearly $ 13 billion annually in the sector. The data were presented by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Atanas Georgiev, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at Sofia University.
The technology boom is so big that there are already places in the world where renewable energy is cheaper than conventional energy, said Slavcho Neykov, chairman of the board of the Institute of Energy Management and moderator of the forum. Neykov will summarize the conclusions drawn during the event and send them as a report to the European Commission.
The forum “How to be Energy Independent?” Was organized at the French Institute in Sofia by Greenpeace – Bulgaria, in partnership with the Bureau of the European Parliament in Bulgaria.
* RES-producers – producers of energy from renewable energy sources (sun, wind, water, thermal energy)
Translator: Valentina Vagge