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bne July 2018 Southeast Europe I 37
Russian company for the multi-billion euro project.
Vladislav Panev, co-chairman of the environmentalist party The Greens and chairman of the board of directors of Sky Asset Management, told bne IntelliNews that the restart of the project will be used for syphoning money from the state, most likely with Russia’s help.
“Even if syphoning the state without Russia’s participation could be possible, this is unlikely to happen in practice. Although, unlike previous years, I expect Belene to be a purely Bulgarian corruption model from now on, with the special participation of international partners, who will protect their interests just as Rosatom did,” Panev said.
He added that financial incompetence or corruption are the most likely reasons for the government’s sudden desire to restart the Belene project. “There can
be two or a number of answers [to the question of why the government wants to revive the project]. The first is that in the cabinet there are enough financially illiterate people who think based on emotions and on public support for
the project, not on numbers. Then it turns out that the state will lose billions due to managerial incompetence. The other option is corruption. Expenses in billions in the Bulgarian environment mean significant commissions and this argument cannot be neglected at all,” Panev says.
Schrodinger’s reactor
Panev believes that the project has little chance of being completed, but will be started and developed for some time as a tool for more corruption, before most likely being abandoned.
“The longer the project is being
kept in a semi-live and semi-dead state, just like Schrodinger’s cat, the bigger the losses for the state will
be. Probably the incomes for those close to power [will be bigger] too,” Panev said. The thought experiment designed by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum
superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.
Even setting aside the potential for large- scale corruption, other opponents of the project claim the government’s efforts
to revive the project are simply illegal. Kaloyan Staykov, senior economist at the Institute for Market Economy, says that the project cannot be restarted as it was terminated by the parliament – in fact by a previous Borissov government – back in 2012.
“The project was not frozen [by parliament]. The project is terminated ... When there is a terminated project, not just frozen, everything starts from
the “corruption scheme of the century”. The parliament also decided to back the government’s request due to the high seismic risk at Belene, and agreed with government that the potential cost of construction was beyond Bulgaria’s possibilities, and that the project had not proved its economic effectiveness. Again, these factors remain valid.
Exports of electricity to the region are being pointed out as one of the main reasons in favour of restarting the Belene project. However, according to energy experts, Turkey and Greece, to which Bulgaria mainly sells electricity, are focusing on building their own renewable energy capacities. Many
of the countries in the region are also
“The longer the project is being kept in a semi-live and semi-dead state, just like Schrodinger’s cat, the bigger the losses for the state will be”
scratch,” Staykov told bne IntelliNews. On the other hand, Bulgaria’s energy ministry claims that the project was frozen and that all documents, permits and procedures are still valid.
Yet the current government does not seem to have a reasonable economic explanation as to what has changed since 2012 that would push the country to spend so much money on the project it previously abandoned.
In 2012, the parliament backed the then government which argued that the country’s priority was not to build new capacities and to encourage consumption, but to focus on energy effectiveness. “This argument has not changed in the past six years and I
do not understand where the whole debate on Belene comes from,” Staykov said, and added that none of the arguments that the parliament took into consideration when voting to stop the project in 2012 have changed.
“Corruption scheme of the century”
At the time, Borissov fiercely opposed the Belene project, claiming that it was
putting efforts into increasing their energy excess production.
“The lack of predictability of consump- tion and of electricity prices not only in Bulgaria, but also in the region, make the construction of 2,000 MW of new capacity extremely risky, in my opinion,” Staykov said. He added that the country rather needs more flexible energy capacities that will meet the significant differences in consumption during the summer and winter months.
Panev commented that spending years on the Belene construction case will freeze private investments in new renewable energy projects, in energy efficiency, electricity transportation and storage.
According to Staykov, the question
of whether Bulgaria needs to build Belene is the last in a series of unasked questions: exactly what energy mix the country needs to have a competitive economy, what capacities it currently has and which of them will be shut in the coming years, as well as whether they will actually be out of exploitation.
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