Bulgarien: Die Kraft und der Widerstand des Stroms
Bulgaria: Power and Resistance of Electricity

Summary/Abstract: Bulgaria: Power and Resistance of Electricity. Socio-technical and techno-political tensions in expanding the renewable energy power production in Bulgaria based on the example of wind energy and photovoltaics Bulgarien: Die Kraft und der Widerstand des Stroms. Sozio-technische sowie techno-politische Spannungen bei der Einführung von erneuerbaren Energien in Bulgarien am Beispiel der Windenergie und der Photovoltaik Summary The paper offers a socio-technical analysis of the current situation in the Bulgarian power industry, assessing its capacity for introducing radical changes in inherited technological, organizational, financial and economic patterns. This situation is defined as maintaining a (difficult) balance between existing path-dependencies and the necessity to respond to the challenges stemming from adopted EU regulations, technological innovations and the changing constellation of forces between business groups in the sector and related political lobbies. This process is exemplified by a detailed account of the remarkable growth of photovoltaic and wind power production in the country since 2007. On the one hand, the pressure from the EU regulations during the pre-accession process and after joining the EU presupposes the adoption of a new separate law for renewable energy sources (RES) from 2007, respectively new subdelagated legislation to guarantee feed-in tariffs, obligatory access to transmission and distribution networks as well as long-term contracts to purchase renewable energy. On the other hand, the instrumentalization of the RES-sector through accession of speculative interest and shady capitals is possible. The chaos in the sector after 2008, with an amount of registered RES volumes several times higher than the capacity of the network, shows only one of the cleavages – is there a chance that it becomes a “normal” business or will it go on with profit margins near to the speculative ones?

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