Bulgaria to incur losses if electricity from Belene is sold for less than eurocents 9.5 / kWh

Georgi Velev

“Bulgaria would be at a disadvantage if the price of electricity from Belene NPP is set below euro cents 9.54 / kWh,” said yesterday Krassen Stanchev, Director of the Institute for Market Economics. “Given a price of euro cents 6/ per kWh, the losses for our country would reach €8 bn, and at a price of euro cents 9 /kWh - €1,2 bn,” he added. The cost of the new NPP exceeds €11 bn. Stanchev explained further that the calculations were made on the presumption that the plant operates for 50 years.

He added that it would be cheaper to import electricity and to rehabilitate the existing old TPPs (Thermoelectric Power Plants), instead of building a new NPP. “The plant is located in an earthquake area and it would not be needed to meet the electricity needs of the country at least until 2025,” said Stanchev. “At a later stage, it would be possible to built new blocks of NPP Kozloduy.”

“The analysis, conducted by the IME cost $15,000 and it was paid by the Open Society Institute,” said Stanchev. Some 12 specialists drafted the project within three months. Experts from IME did not explain how electricity prices would change in the coming years with or without Belene NPP.

The Kozloduy NPP is in a much safer area in seismic terms, as evidenced by the map of Europe. “Over the past 3 years, there was an earthquake in the area of Belene every year,” said Martin Dimitrov, leader of the Blue Coalition, yesterday for bTV. He demanded that the report, revealing the corrupt transactions for the plant, which was submitted to the Prosecution, be released in public.

“The debate about the Belene NPP is irrational and emotional,” commented for bTV former Minister of Energy Rumen Ovcharov. According to him, the discussion on the cost of the plant should be led on the basis of numbers, and not with emotional arguments. “There is no need of replacement and compensation capacities for the Belene project,” stated further Ovcharov.

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