Dr. Dragomir Tsanev, Executive Director of EnEffect
Dr. Dragomir Tsanev is the executive director of EnEffect and official representative of the Municipal Network for Energy Efficiency EcoEnergy. He is the coordinator of a number of international research projects, including the BeSMART project, implemented in partnership with the Bulgarian Industrial Asociacion. The goal of the BeSMART project is to create a permanent discussion forum for the joint development of policies and the structuring of innovative financial schemes stimulating investments in energy efficiency.
Mr. Tsanev, within the framework of the BeSMART project, you organized a series of round tables for sustainable financing of programs for energy efficiency and renewable sources. What is your overall impression of the subject, since you often touch on it in discussions with the professional sector and institutions?
In recent years we have actually organized more than 10 round tables on the topic of "Investment in Energy Efficiency", and the general impression is that the professional community is of the mindset that the available public resource should be used to stimulate private investment in the field and not stifle potential business opportunities with intensive grant schemes, as happened in some sectors, such as the renovation of multi-family residential buildings. Therefore, the opportunities of financing institutions to provide optimal conditions for access to financing should be used, administrative burdens for businesses should be reduced and, of course, work should be done in the direction of increasing the qualifications of personnel.
Do you have data on the number of buildings in Bulgaria that need renovation for better energy efficiency?
Yes of course. There are over 66,000 multi-family residential buildings in Bulgaria, of which about 90% should be in need of deep energy renovation. For them, the public resource simply cannot be enough, and that is why efforts must be made to attract investments from the owners. To them we must add nearly 1,300,000 single-family buildings, in which there is absolutely no traceability of the measures applied, but in which nearly half of the Bulgarian population lives. For them, there should be parallel financial mechanisms to stimulate investments to improve the buildings themselves and their energy characteristics.
What is the path for this update to happen?
The way is a permanent and purposeful policy of the state institutions and avoiding the campaigning that we have seen in the last ten years. There is no way with grant funding providing 100% support for renewal measures coming over several years, building capacity on the business side and delivering the necessary business services. This is precisely the huge obstacle, we see it at this moment, in which, with the presence of over 2 billion BGN, which had to be "utilized" in less than 9 months, the business found itself in an absolute impossibility to meet the market demand, accordingly, the quality of the offered services dropped significantly.
What are the biggest challenges to quality energy renovation of the building stock?
The biggest challenge in this sector is precisely the lack of a market and developed energy services, which have been stifled by short-sighted national policies. In order to make progress, it is good to have constant support from the state, but not control of the market. It should be possible to develop competitive market services in the entire investment process, so as to improve the quality from the moment of the energy survey, which is the fundamental phase in the renovation, through the project, to the completion and the quality control of the applied measures, and of course, tracking results.
On the threshold of the new heating season, how to achieve energy efficiency in the office and home?
In our homes, and especially in those where energy efficiency measures have not been implemented, about 70% of energy consumption is for heating and cooling, so the main measure is to limit the need for them. This, of course, can best be done with energy efficiency measures – replacing window frames, installing external thermal insulation, insulating roofs, insulating floors in certain situations. If at the moment we cannot afford such type of measures, first of all we should do so that we forget about heating devices using direct electricity such as radiators, rheotan stoves, blowers, etc. similar. Let's try to invest in modern heat pump installations and air conditioners with a high seasonal coefficient of conversion of electrical energy and, at the same time, not to forget that if we allow the rooms to cool too much when we return home, we have to increase the appliances of maximum power, which is actually the biggest cause of energy overspending. The advice is to do everything possible when it comes to renovation, modernize the heating installations and appliances and of course keep them in working order, as well as maintain relatively constant temperatures, without significant temperature differences at different times of the day.
