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The last year was a bad one for German investments in Bulgaria. Why do you think so many big companies decided to leave the country?

- Some of what happened here last year didn’t have much to do with Bulgaria. For example E.ON left the country partly because the company was not doing well here but also because its operations were going badly in a whole lot of countries. But at the same time when we talk about renewables, for example, the situation here is bad.


Since the new law came in it’s virtually impossible to finance projects until they’re already in operation which means that the market has become very unattractive. What we can see at the moment among our members is that especially the German companies are thinking about leaving the market and the reason is that the market at home - in Germany, has become more and more attractive.


When Germany decided last year to finally exit nuclear energy she has become even more focused on renewables. So the clear thinking of lot of the management of these companies is about a home market that supports renewable energy and that wants to help us to grow so why should I bother in Bulgaria where the government seems to do anything to hinder us. I think this government has done a pretty horrible job in terms of supporting investment - partially by hindering laws like the one for our sector but a lot of the time by simply thinking out loud about things like should we change this or that and just creating a lot of unnecessary risk and uncertainty around investing in the country.


There seems to be a lack of understanding that if this thinking, this debate, ends up in a newspapers here it will also ends up on the desk of every executive outside Bulgaria who will think "Do I want to invest in Bulgaria, do I want to keep investing in Bulgaria or do I want to leave the country?". Every time these things happen, and we’ve seen a lot of them last year, it increases the risk that companies pull out of the country.


Could you say that last year was worse than 2010?

- For wind energy, for sure. For example in 2009 and 2010 we had between 150 and 200 MW of new wind capacity installed in the country. We only have the official numbers for the first half of 2011 but it was 15 MW then, a tiny fraction of what happened the year before. So for us, in renewable energies, 2011 was the worst year.


At first when the new government came there was still a lot of euphoria about the chances that things will improve but the last year has just seen a lot of unnecessary fighting and arguing.


A few months ago you said that most companies in the wind energy sector have decided to halt their projects and they’re waiting…

- Last year, after the new law came in, most serious developers who have a normal attitude to risk decided to basically slow down or completely stop their developments and just to wait. And more and more of them now seem to change their thinking about how to exit the market or how to sell off part of their operations because the perspective for how these things might change for the better in the short term has just disappeared.


Are there companies who have lost patience and pulled off the country?

- Yes, there are. There are some companies that have left the market or they are leaving the market at the moment to go and focus on other countries where renewables are booming. And there’s also a lot of sales and investment that hasn’t happened. For example in 2010 investment in the country was 150 MW, in 2011 it was 15 in the first half of the year, say thirty in total. That means 120 MW of investment that just didn’t happen. That’s over 160 million euro of direct investment in Bulgaria that didn’t happen and this also means about a 100 jobs that didn’t get created.


How does Bulgaria stand in comparison to neighbouring countries?

- I think the only neighboring country that ranks worse at the moment for investment in renewables is Greece because of the overall financial crisis there. Every year Ernst&Young publishes rankings for some 40 countries of how attractive are they for investments in wind energy and solar. Romania has been steadily advancing in the upper half and Bulgaria keeps on dropping down in the rankings and is 36 now, which means that there are exactly 4 countries that are worse to invest in wind energy. And that’s not good because it’s a good industry and it’s an industry which creates a lot of jobs compared to MW. It can deliver new jobs at a fairly low price and that’s why other countries are supporting it. Bulgaria doesn’t need to spend more, it just need to get smarter about how the policy is developed and it needs to learn to reassure investors and turn the framework into something more stable and also turn the operation of the government itself into something that is perceived as much more stable and reliable than what’s happening here. For example, the prime minister manages to contradict himself on major policy decisions multiple times. He changes his mind on substantial things like for example should we have another nuclear power station or not. He changes his mind on these things overnight over and over again and that’s concerning investments for billions for a country with 7 million people.


But the government says that restrictions are necessary because this is the next bubble waiting to pop…

- There’s a lot of talking about this bubble and how many thousands of megawatts are coming and sure there are much more planned than was needed but also much more planned than really gets done. The government cites a total of 4000 MW of planned projects except that in 2011 the new built projects so far are 15 MW, so it’s a tiny fraction of what we really get. There a lot of people who have the idea to do something but the projects which are realized are very few. The next problem is also that the government keeps on citing these numbers and says there is a long list of these projects but they never publish the list. That’s quite convenient. We’ve requested the information from the State Energy and Water Regulatory Commission (SEWRC), to show us the list and they said in October we don’t have it. And they still say we don’t have it and then the minister and parliament cites how many MW are in the list.


The deputy energy minister Delyan Dobrev has recently said that there are plans for 6400 MW in renewables which is tantamount to three nuclear stations. Do you agree?

- First, on the numbers. The government says there are projects for 2300 MW. Maybe they are more or maybe less but there should be a report on this by ESO or NEK. But it doesn’t get public, there is no way to verify this information. And than every time the minister of energy or some other member of government speak on the topic the numbers change.


We heard in Parliament in December in the Commission for regional development even then the numbers mentioned by the same two people - Delyan Dobrev and the deputy chairman of the Commission Valentin Nikolov - were different from what they were now. And than they were massively different from what we’ve been told in April and May and what has been estimated in the fall. It would just be nice to actually have the objective data so that we can all agree on what the situation is and what needs to be done.