The four political parties involved in the discussion for forming a new government have reached a partial agreement on the energy policies. This became clear during the first round of negotiations on a coalition agreement.
At the energy meeting, it turned out that the four parties support the idea of freezing electricity and heating prices for households from January 1. Former Economy Minister Traicho Traikov was the first to raise the issue on behalf of Democratic Bulgaria. He was supported by Ivan Hinovski and the host of the meeting Asen Vassilev, who also proposed the parliament and EWRC to consider not changing the regulatory prices from January 1.
According to the current rules of the Regulator, the prices of electricity and heating can be changed once every 6 months. After the increase of the natural gas and electricity prices on wholesale markets, it was expected that from the 1st of January 2021 there will be an increase in heating and electricity prices for household consumers. Experts predict that this increase will be in the range of 20-30%.
The discussions during the meeting included also the following topics:
- Households below the poverty line to be entitled to 200kWh free of charge electricity consumption every month.
- Investigation of the possibilities for state owned organizations to return to the regulated market
- Audit of state –owned energy companies
- Analysis of potential delaying of the energy market liberalization for household consumers
- Measures to limit the export of electricity, but after negotiations with the EC
- Continuation of the aid for business consumers compensating their high energy during the winter months
- Using the profits from state-owned power producers to support business consumers. This proposal remained debatable
- Introduction of negative levels of the fee obligations to society, which is paid by all consumers, as a measure to control prices
- Revision of operational rules of IBEX with an emphasis on long-term contracts
- Strengthening the control of the Commission for protection of competition over the energy market, but after a change of its management and increase of its expert potential
- Completion of the gas connection with Greece as soon as possible
- Limit up to 50% capacity reservation in the gas network from one supplier
- Diversification of gas sources and expansion of the gas storage in Chiren
- Construction of a new nuclear power plant
- Suspend electricity supply after the second unpaid bill
- Proposal for 9% VAT on energy, which was rejected
- Development of pilot projects for production of energy from geothermal sources, study for the construction of power plants on the Danube rive
- Simplified regime for installation of RES. When RES are meant for self-consumption to go through a fast administrative procedure
- To review the EC open cases in the energy sector against Bulgaria and to seek a solution
- New energy strategy
- Smart grids – for electricity and natural gas
During the meeting all participants agreed on some of the topics, while others remained for further discussions.
Source: 24 chasa
