Bulgaria and Germany agree to cooperate on energy
Source: Euractiv
Bulgaria and Germany signed a declaration on cooperation in energy, green policies and climate protection, the Bulgarian Energy Ministry announced on Sunday.
Bulgaria’s caretaker Energy Minister Vladimir Malinov met with German Economy and Climate Action Minister Robert Habeck in Thessaloniki, Greece, and signed the declaration.
“We will expand our partnership in the areas of hydrogen technology, renewable energy, green transition, energy corridors, supply diversification and others,” Malinov said.
Both countries are keen to strengthen cooperation to promote energy efficiency and security, sector decarbonisation, development of green energy corridors and interconnections, carbon capture, use and storage, the declaration reads.
Over the past three years, the Bulgarian state and local and foreign companies have developed large-scale projects worth tens of billions of euros to green the local economy. Most of the projects aim to transform the two major coal regions in the west and south of the country and focus on generating electricity from photovoltaics and green hydrogen.
However, with Bulgaria’s ongoing political crisis seeing Bulgarians go to the polls in October for the seventh time in just over three years, the country is being prevented from accessing nearly €5 billion in stimulus funds – posing problems for future projects, including green ones.
Since Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, Germany has been Bulgaria’s biggest trading partner, an Euractiv check shows. According to data from the National Statistical Institute, trade between the two countries will amount to €23 billion by 2023.
On Sunday, Malinov also met Greek Environment and Energy Minister Theodoros Skylakakis.
The two discussed the strategic importance of Bulgarian-Greek cooperation for energy security in Europe. They expect the LNG terminal near Alexandroupolis to become operational on 1 October.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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