ENERGY EFFICIENCY CRITERIA TO BE SET FOR PROJECTS

Energy efficiency will be set as a factor for the evaluation of projects during the next EU programming period 2014-2020,” Minister of Environment and Water Nona Karadjova announced to journalists after a discussion on climate. “We will demand money for energy efficiency, sustainable urban transport and changing the central heating systems. Studies aimed at finding the best options for changing the heating in the most polluted 10-15 Bulgarian towns will be financed with money from the technical assistance programme Environment. We will also open the programme for purification plants for settlements of 2,000 to 10,000 inhabitants in order to have ready projects in 2014,” specified Karadjova.
The Minister assured that by mid-2012, all funds under the programme will be negotiated. Currently, these stand at BGN 1.4 bn. The countries and companies we are negotiating with for selling our national surplus of quotas under the Kyoto Protocol want to invest their money in biomass projects. We have 200 million tonnes of Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) and budget revenues from them were estimated at about BGN 1 bn. A deal will be closed in the autumn but it will bring some BGN 10 mln,” reminded Karadjova. “About 50% of Bulgaria's potential for renewable energy sources lies in biomass,” added the Minister.