Three years after Bulgaria adopted the Energy Efficiency Act and introduced a host of measures to rein in energy profligacy, the country is yet to produce tangible results.
In its latest report, the World Energy Council (WEC) ranked Bulgaria as the most energy inefficient country in the European Union. With energy intensity of 1.769 tons of oil equivalent (toe), the unit measuring energy needed to produce of a GDP unit, Bulgaria lags far behind the EU average of 0.208 toe.
Slovakia and Estonia are the countries to share the bottom three ranking with 1.368 toe and 1.179 toe, respectively.
Bulgarian media reported that the measures undertaken to substitute energy-consuming with more energy-efficient ones had hardly helped the country improve its energy intensity performance. However, as experts commented in remarks on the report’s findings, energy intensity is a variable influenced by a host of factors, and energy efficiency measures are just part of the overall picture. It is not that they are not yielding fruit, experts said. On the contrary, the phenomenon accompanied soaring energy consumption.
While energy-saving measures resulted in a three per cent efficiency within a three-year period, energy consumption has been steadily growing at three per cent each year. This means that the differential between results from measures to reduce energy consumption and the percentage at which energy consumption grows has remained unchanged since 2003. That year, Bulgaria needed five to six times more energy to produce a unit of GDP than the EU average. It still does.
Speaking to Darik Radio on February 8, Tasko Ermenkov, the head of the Bulgarian Energy Efficiency Agency, made an important distinction between primary and end-use energy intensity, the latter excluding the energy used as input material. Logically, the impact of energy efficiency measures is seen in the latter figure, whereas the WEC pointed to primary energy intensity, the entire energy spend of the country.
By end-use, Bulgaria’s energy intensity was only by 40 per cent poorer than the EU average in 2006. This puts Bulgaria again in the lower half of the energy efficiency roster but is closer to the median, Ermenkov said. Had there been no energy efficiency measures, Bulgaria would have consumed five million toe, as it did in 2003, while in 2006 energy consumption was one million toe, he said.
This means that the energy efficiency measures work, but much more effort is necessary to ensure their impact is on a par with the energy consumption increases necessary to feed fast-track economic growth. This would help Bulgaria fare better in terms of primary energy intensity as well.
At present, there is a string of measures aimed at tackling energy efficiency in the three main categories of energy users, namely the building fund, industry and transportation.
While collectively they are addressed by EU programmes such as intelligent energy, national energy efficiency strategies and funds, the building fund enjoys the largest set of energy efficiency stimuli.
The collective owners of a building, for example, can waive buildings’ tax payments for seven years. In addition, financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have issued special credit lines for energy-efficient projects, which have been passed on through local banks. The result is that progress in this category is the most tangible, while industry and transportation need to be better addressed, Ermenkov said.
Although industry has installed energy-saving capacities in line with EU requirements and has, respectively, reduced its share in energy consumption, further effort is necessary if Bulgaria is to match the EU energy consumption share-out. In Europe, buildings are the largest energy consumer with 40 per cent, whereas industry comes in at 20 to 22 per cent. In Bulgaria, industry consumes 36 per cent of overall energy, and buildings 22.7 per cent.
Grasping the overall picture, Ermenkov said that energy efficiency measures should not be carried out in isolation. To cut primary energy intensity, Bulgaria should also reduce – instead of increasing – energy consumption. An EU directive Bulgaria targets an cut in overall energy use by nine per cent, Ermenkov said. To make this happen, it is not only industry but also transportation to lessen their energy spending. Transportation, in particular, goes fully into the primary energy intensity column as fuels used to feed the vehicle park do not bring added value and, therefore, are written off as energy expenditure only, Ermenkov said.
The problems with transportation do not stop here. Most vehicles in, say, Sofia are old and energy-intensive, while congestion has boosted travel time to two hours a day. For Sofia alone, waiting time at traffic lights has resulted in 400 000 litres of extra fuel spending a day, if it is assumed that 200 000 vehicles use up two litres while waiting. To save energy, Ermenkov said, it would be worthwhile to make changes to traffic rules and gradually convert to a largely fuel-saving park.
Energy efficiency is a realm influenced by many and inter-dependent factors. The conclusion? Only tackling all factors at a time would help bring the energy intensity bottom line to EU levels.
