Bulgaria to cut gross electricity consumption by 2025: report

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Bulgaria would reduce gross electricity consumption by 2025 compared to last year, and the country would need new base load power plants after 2030, a report said here on Monday.

The forecast, issued by the Risk Management Lab at the New Bulgarian University, said gross electricity generation in the country in 2013 was 44 terawatt hours (TWh) while the gross inland consumption stood at 37.9 TWh, with 9.5 TWh going for exports and 3.4 TWh coming from imports.

However, despite the expected 27 percent increase in the gross domestic product, the gross electricity consumption in the country in 2025 would decline to 35.4 TWh, according to Ivan Ivanov who presented the report at a press conference.

Factors such as demographic crisis, improved energy efficiency and increased electricity cost would contribute to the reduction of consumption, the report said.

Sharp increase in natural gas consumption, which would displace part of the electricity consumption, would slice another 6.3 TWh, reducing the total amount of electricity consumed to 29.1 TWh in 2025, it said.

Meanwhile, exports would reach 10.3 TWh, almost the same as in 2013, so the country would need to produce no more than 40 TWh in 2025, Ivanov said.

Thus, the existing power generation capacity in Bulgaria would fully meet its electricity needs, and large facilities, which have a long service life, would provide the necessary base load electricity, the report said.

New base load power plants in the future would be required only as a replacement of some of the current ones, but it would not be sooner than 2030 for the thermal and 2037 for the nuclear power units.

According to the last annual report of Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant, the only nuclear power plant in Bulgaria, its net electricity generation in 2013 reached 13.3 TWh, or 32.6 percent share in the national energy mix.

The Risk Management Lab at the New Bulgarian University, led by Associate Professor Dr. Ivan Kostov, prime minister of Bulgaria in the period 1997-2001, was established last October. Endit

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