Bulgaria’s dominant power utility NEK said its electricity exports would be around 4.5 kilowatt (kWh) this year, unchanged from 2007. “Bulgaria exported the electricity mainly to its Balkan neighbors Greece, Serbia and Macedonia,” NEK’s executive director Madrik Papazyan told a news conference on Saturday.
The company declined to make export forecasts for 2009 due to dropping electricity prices in central and western Europe, which Papazyan said could make Bulgarian exports too expensive. Bulgaria is building a new 2,000-megawatt nuclear plant, expected to be ready around 2015, to help it regain its position as a major power exporter in southeast Europe and also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Balkan country lost its position of a leading power exporter in the region after shutting older Soviet reactors at its Kozloduy nuclear power plant as a condition for joining the European Union in January 2007. Prior to the nuclear units’ closure, Bulgaria covered about 80 percent of power shortages in the Balkans.
(KATHIMERINI, 12/22/2008)