site.btaShareholder Agreement with Westinghouse Becomes Effective after Final Approval of Next Government

Sofia, July 31 (BTA) - At its regular meeting on July 30, 2014, the Council of Ministers adopted a decision, approving the report of the Economy and Energy Minister related to the conclusion of a shareholders agreement Сbetween Kozloduy N-plant - Novi Moshtnosti EAD single-shareholder joint-stock company, Kozloduy N-plant EAD and Westinghouse LLC, the government information service said on Thursday. The press release was related to media publications and comments about the project for unit 7 at Kozloduy.
 
The shareholders' agreement will become effective after the final approval of the next government, including the model of financing and the design, engineering, delivery and construction contract by the relevant procedure. Preparations for the last two documents have not begun yet, the press release said.

In its last days the outgoing government has been working actively on energy projects bonding Bulgaria, Green Party Co-Chairman Borislav Sandov told a BTA-hosted news conference earlier on Thursday. These are the new unit at Kozloduy N-plant and the South Stream gas pipeline, he specified.

The future Unit 7 of Kozloduy N-plant is actually a new plant which cannot hold out any stress test of the European Commission, Sandov said. They say the new unit will cost 5,000 million dollars, but the price will probably be higher. We do not need this electric power, he added.

The construction of South Stream is yet another involvement with the existent supplier of natural gas and the use of fossil fuels, which we don't need either, Sandov said.

Anton Zhelev, a representative of the Bulgarian Solar Association, denied the official assertion of the government that gross energy consumption from renewable energy sources amounts to 16 per cent. They include in this heating on wood which has a 6 per cent share in gross consumption, he explained. Economy and Energy Minister Dragomir Stoynev is trying to forbid small solar installations up to 5 kW to be joined to the electric grid, he added. The prices of this power generated by photovoltaic plants are dropping constantly and are becoming competitive to coal-fired plants, Zhelev said. In his words, the future in the energy sector are hybrid installations which include solar panels with large batteries that store the energy for at least 24 hours and are being developed successfully already.