Spanish real estate developer Grupo Metro 2000 plans to invest a total of 25 million euro ($32 million) to build a solar park in Bulgaria, senior company officials said in a recent interview.
“Initially we are looking at developing 5.0 megawatts (MW) in Bulgaria. Having in mind that as of today the cost of 1.0 MW is about 5.0 million euro we project an initial investment of 25 million euro,” one of Grupo Metro’s managing directors, Tomas Latorre, told SeeNews.
He added that the timeframe will depend on the development of laws regulating the sector, but it is expected that the project will be completed within five years.
“At the beginning we are planning to invest in solar photovoltaic energy, because we have experience in this type of project that we developed in other countries. In the future we might be open to invest in other types of solar energy production,” another Grupo Metro managing director, Julian Diaz, added.
The company is researching the investment opportunities in several cities – Pazardzhik, Velingrad and Gotze Delchev in southern Bulgaria.
“We are not bound to any particular type of strategy for individual investment. Our first priority is to develop our own photovoltaic fields but we are also open to the idea of buying shares of other energy companies or vice-versa,” Diaz said.
Grupo Metro plans to sell the produced electricity to Bulgarian companies, Latorre added.
Bulgaria’s state energy regulator has set a purchase price per megawatthour (MWh) generated by photovoltaic facilities at up to 782 levs ($535/400 euro), compared to a maximum of 175 levs for wind-generated electricity and 35.22 levs for electricity, generated in the country’s key coal-fired thermal power plant, Maritsa East 2. Bulgaria has set much higher prices for electricity produced by alternative sources in order to stimulate companies to invest in such expensive green energy projects.
Although tens of projects for photovoltaic parks in Bulgaria have been announced, only a few have been completed. The situation is similar for wind-powered generation facilities, which despite appropriate legislation being in place, stay at around 120 MW of installed capacity, versus an estimated potential of 2,000 MW in the country.
Grupo Metro expects to achieve an annual energy output of 6.75 million kWh in Bulgaria. The company did not elaborate on the timeframe.
“[This] would be enough to provide energy for 9,000 households per year,” Diaz said.
“The other factor which is very important is that 5.0 MW of photovoltaic energy will save the release of 2205 tons of CO2. This will help with fulfilling of the Kyoto agreement,” he added.
Kyoto Protocol requires industrialised nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, allowing nations to sell their excess credits resulting from the development of environmentally friendly technology to other countries. Under this mechanism, companies also can buy and sell carbon credits.
Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, must cover 11% of its electricity consumption by power generated from renewable sources by 2010 and 16% by 2020 under agreements with the bloc.
Grupo Metro entered the Bulgarian real estate market last summer. Since then the company has invested around 15 million euro in land and apartments.
(1 euro=1.95583 Bulgarian levs).
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