site.btaRegional Development Minister Highlights Problems of Energy Renovation of Residential Buildings

Regional Development Minister Andrey Tsekov highlighted problems of the energy renovation of multi-family residential buildings at a hearing in Parliament on Thursday proposed by BSP for Bulgaria.

Tsekov said the problems with the current procedure stemmed from the shortage of funds for complete renovation of the housing stock designed before 1999. Those are above all social and political problems and the national energy efficiency policy must ensure that the process of housing stock renovation which started in 2015 is completed.

A total of 756 buildings in 102 out of 265 municipalities were approved under a procedure for housing stock energy renovation, which is part of the EU-financed National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Nearly BGN 1,130 million will be invested in the form of grants in the first stage of the procedure.

With over 3,000 applications filed by 152 municipalities, the available budget was exceeded four times. There are nearly 2,200 buildings on a back-up list. A limit was set on financing depending on the size of the municipalities. For instance, Sofia Municipality has a limit of BGN 150 million. Without those limits, the resources would have been divided among 15 municipalities, said Tsekov.

At the second stage, BGN 282 million will be available for some 200 buildings with 20% financing by the residents. In addition, BGN 409 million will be made available for energy renovation in 2024 under the Regional Development Programme.

Responding to criticisms about unfair ranking of the applicant buildings, Tsekov presented the ranking criteria. The methodology takes into account the quality of the project proposals and the level of energy savings. The environmental impact, CO2 emission savings and the economic efficiency of the investment are also taken into account.

Afterwards, the decarbonization and energy efficiency policy should be implemented through the National Decarbonization Fund set up at the Energy Ministry as part of reforms under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Minister said.

He also said that 2,100 out of some 5,500 multi-family residential buildings in need of renovation underwent energy retrofitting under an earlier national programme.