Legal Alert-The New Renewable Energy Act
THE NEW RENEWABLE ENERGY ACT
(IN FORCE AS OF 03.05.2011)
The Bulgarian Renewable Energy Act (“the RE Act”) was published in State Gazette, issue No. 35 as of 03.05.2011, and entered into force repealing the Renewable and Alternative Energy Sources and Biofuels Act.
The following is a brief overview of the most important amendments introduced by the new Act to the previous statutory framework.
Scope of the new Act
The main issues addressed in the RE Act are related to the production and consumption of energy, gas and biofuels from renewable sources including electricity and energy for heating and cooling. The new provisions target households, business and transport sector as well, in which the security of energy supply problem is most acute.
The new Act lays down stricter regulations to the fast growing renewable energy sector and in particular, to the development and implementation of projects for generation of electricity from renewable sources. These restrictive measures were preceded by a report of the Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism published in March 2011 stating that a significant increase of the total amount of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in 2010 had resulted in exceeding the indicative national target share for the year with 4 percent.
Directive 2009/28/ЕО
The RE Act implements the new Directive 2009/28/EO of 23 April 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources, amending and subsequently repealing Directives 2001/77/EC and 2003/30/EC.
The new Directive set up a 20 % target share of energy from renewable sources in European Union’s gross final consumption of energy by 2020 and a 10 % share in transport sector. To this end, mandatory national target shares were defined for each Member State.
Bulgaria is required to achieve a 16 % target share of renewable energy in gross internal energy consumption by 2020. That includes a 10 % share in gross energy and fuel consumption in transport.
