According to reports from websites that cover news on renewable energies, the Bulgarian government has just announced its intention to raise the installed capacity for renewable generation by 2.5GW to a total 4.8GW by 2024. Solar PV is expected to account for the majority of the installation growth, followed by wind power.
Electricity System Operator (ESO), which is a major government-run utility in Bulgaria, has told local media that the country will add approximately 1.6GW of PV generation, 700MW of wind generation, and 219MW of biomass generation between 2020 and 2024.
The Bulgarian government began to earnestly develop its renewable energy industry in 2007, when it passed the Renewable and Alternative Energy Sources and Biofuels Act. The act established the country’s feed-in tariff scheme and introduced measures to promote investments in various renewable energy projects.
Regarding the solar sector, the amount of PV installations in Bulgaria totaled 77MW in 2020 and is projected to total 114MW in 2021. Recent analyses from solar industry associations suggest that the Bulgarian government maintains targets that are fairly modest when it comes to building utility-scale PV projects and deploying rooftop PV systems.
On the other hand, Bulgaria achieved its overall renewable energy target for 2020. Renewable energies accounted for 21.4%, or roughly one-fifth, of the country’s gross final energy consumption in 2020. As of the end of that same year, the installed capacity for renewable generation in the country reached a cumulative total of 1.8GW. Of that, 1.1GW came from solar PV and 700MW came from wind power.
Last year, the Bulgarian government released a national strategy blueprint for the development of renewable energies. The plan calls for installing 2.646GW of renewable generation by the end of 2030. Solar PV will comprise much of the addition. If this goal is reached, then the share of renewable energies in Bulgaria’s gross final energy consumption will also rise to 27.1% in 2030. The development of the national strategy blueprint and other renewable energy policies has been in response to the need of the country to follow the requirements of the EU for energy transition.
However, it should be noted that the EU wants its member states to source 32% of their respective gross final energy consumption from renewable energies by 2030. In the aspect of applications, news websites have reported that power generation, heating and cooling, and transportation will respectively account for 30.3%, 42.6%, and 14.2% of Bulgaria’s renewable energy supply in 2030.