President Opens Green Transition Forum

UPDATED President Opens Green Transition Forum

Bistra Roushkova

President Rumen Radev opened Green Week 2023, Sofia, June 20, 2023 (BTA Photo)

Sofia,

20.06.2023 10:20 | UPDATED 20.06.2023 14:47

(BTA)

President Rumen Radev Tuesday opened a green transition forum in Sofia. Titled Green Week 2023, the three-day event will look into various aspects of green transition in Central and Eastern Europe, including energy connectivity, green finance and innovation). "A successful transition takes solid planning, correctly assessing the environment and identifying all risk factors, building a clear strategy based on precise goals and mechanisms for accomplishing them," the head of State said.

The President said there is the big question of who and how in Bulgaria and Europe plans the green transition and ensures its sustainability. "In the past decades we were used to the State being less and less involved in this planning cycle because its role was constantly diminishing, but in recent years events have happened that have shaken our societies and the question here is whether we were ready for these events, especially when we talk about planning."

The COVID-19 crisis, the energy crisis, the galloping inflation, the war in Ukraine - they have all overturned the priorities and the role of the players in this planning, the president added. "We saw the State suddenly taking the lead in these processes. And on the other hand, it cannot do anything on its own," he said.

According to him, the recent crises have highlighted a number of shortcomings in the approach of the State and society to crises and how to address them.

He argued that the planning needs to answer some key questions, including what we want Bulgaria to be like after a certain period of time, how can we achieve the balance between all important players - the business, the civil sector, the scientific community and the local authorities.

"When we talk about competitiveness, we always think about energy because it is the foundation of any economy. The availability of affordable, reliable and cheap energy determines whether we will be competitive. Here is the big clash: how to plan and organize this transition so that the aspirations of all European citizens to live in a greener and more environmentally friendly world are embodied and, on the other hand, our competitiveness does not suffer. This is why the transformation of the energy sector is extremely important," the Head of State believes.

He also said that Bulgaria "has been and remains a very active participant" in the European nuclear alliance spearheaded by France and Bulgaria's efforts aims recognition of nuclear energy as green energy. "That is very important for us because during the worst time of the energy crisis it could be seen who stood behind the Bulgarian economy and business and how we went through it smoothly and maximized the profit from export so as to be able to support Bulgarian businesses," Radev said.

He argued that "during this hardest of years, the resilience of the Bulgarian economy was guaranteed" and now Bulgaria has the lowest fuel prices and "the regular government and the next governments have the peace of mind and can focus on the green transition because gas supplies are guaranteed".

The President went on to speak about the importance of European connectivity: "transmission of energy, improved connections between the power transmission operators because if we manage to connect northern and southern Europe with much larger capacity, then we can solve some of the challenges in storing energy".

Radev argued that Bulgaria has the key advantage of its geographic location. "In the last months we showed that we have been able to capitalize on this geographic location in the best possible way," he said.

According to him, most of the harmful emissions come from transport.

/NF/