Pearl Property News & Blog

Bulgaria has seen interest rates for mortgages fall from an amazing 16% per annum down to 7.5% we are hopeful that the interest will fall to be inline with other EU countries.

EUR 200 M Renewable Energy Project to Start in Northern Bulgaria

The Japanese Mitsubishi Corporation and the Bulgarian Dei Energy will build an EUR 200 M ecological energy park near the Northern Bulgarian city of Pleven. Photo by BGNES
The Japanese Mitsubishi Corporation and the Bulgarian Dei Energy will build an EUR 200 M ecological energy park near the Northern Bulgarian city of Pleven, the Pari Daily reported.

The park will be built on 1,800 dekares of abandoned land in the Gulyantsi Municipality, in the Pleven Region. There project will include both wind mills and photovoltaic panels with a total capacity of 160 MW. The construction is scheduled to begin in 2010, while the completion is planned for 2012. Many local contractors will be involved.

“Our research in the region shows that the wind mills will be able to operate nearly 2 000 hours a year, and the investment amount will be recovered in 8-10 years”, the Dei Energy CEO, Ivan Tihov, explained. The photovoltaic panels will be located on the Danube river’s shore, producing energy of 1,200-1,300 hours a year, he added.

Dei Energy has had similar projects near Bulgaria’s Sliven. The company will start another wind park there in the next few days. Its power will be 150 MW.

“We plan to build several renewable energy parks around Bulgaria with total a power of 500-600 MW”, Tihov said.

Balmoral Capital plans PV projects in Bulgaria

Balmoral Capital Holdings, financing arm of Balmoral Bulgaria SPV, an integrated solar power plant development company, has signed a 25-year agreement with Apex Solar to organize approvals for 18 photovoltaic power plants in Bulgaria, according to SolarBuzz.

The plants will range from 1MW to 5MW for a total of 144MW across the whole 18. Each plant designed will be organized by Apex Solar to be developed for panel delivery in early 2010.

“The organization and contract building now in PV power plants in Bulgaria is a major milestone for our Balmoral Companies as our subsidiary Balmoral Bulgaria,” said Rodney Kincaid, Managing Partner of Balmoral Capital and CEO of Balmoral Financial.

Kincaid added that the company is looking for competitive bids on high-performance PV panels, with the results of the winning bid given in the next 30 days. “There are so many high technically performing panels with great financial returns. It is hard to settle to one manufacturer,” he said.

In the future the company plans to build 130-144 PV plants in Bulgaria and move to other European markets by 2011. Various income funds are discussing buying the income streams from the projects.

Indian wind turbine manufacturer, Suzlon Energy Ltd, has entered into an agreement with Technomash to deliver six Suzlon S88 2.1 MW wind turbines to a wind farm in the Varna region in Bulgaria.

The world’s fifth and India’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, Suzlon Energy Ltd, will supply six of its S88 2.1 MW wind turbines to the Bulgarian industrial group, Technomash, during 2009 and 2010 for installation on a wind farm close to Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.

“Bulgaria offers an excellent wind regime and supportive investment climate, and we aim to expand the wind market in the country,” said Erik Winther Pedersen, CEO of Suzlon Wind Energy.

“This is both an important order and important new market for Suzlon. Europe forms the largest market for wind energy, and we are focused on expanding our footprint in the market,” added Sumant Sinha, COO of Suzlon Energy Limited.

According to Suzlon, Bulgaria offers considerable potential for wind farm development, with around 3,400 MW of wind resource that can be developed in the mid-term. Furthermore, the Bulgarian government has announced a generous feed-in tariff for wind energy and has set a maximum of 11% of gross energy consumption to come from renewable energy sources by 2010.

For additional information:
Suzlon

6th EE & RES Congress and Exhibition for South East Europe

We would like to announce the forthcoming 6-th International Congress on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources for South East Europe – 14th to 16th April 2010 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

With world-known experts invited as key speakers and more than 600 specialists and investors expected to attend, the Congress promises to be a leading event for South-Eastern Europe. The parallel Exhibition will showcase the latest technologies, equipment and products in the field of EE and RES.

The two events give great opportunity not only to exchange valued knowledge and best practices with leading experts from EU but to meet face to face producers and traders from the Region of South-Eastern Europe for development of the local energy sources and for more energy independence by reaching the EU target 20%-20%-20%.

Congress 2009: 43 speakers from 12 countries; 400 attendees from 28 countries.
Exhibition 2009: 124 direct exhibitors from 11 countries; 3219 professional visitors from 34 countries.

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EU officially adopts climate and energy package

The EU has finalized its plan on how to deal with climate change and energy security. Yesterday, the EU Parliament officially approved the climate and energy package as agreed by EU leaders at last weeks summit.

The package includes legally binding targets to cut GHG emissions by 20%, establish a 20% share for renewable energy, and improve energy efficiency by 20%, by 2020.
With all 785 elected MEPs present in Strasbourg, Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of the package with 610 votes for and 60 against amid 29 abstentions.

The climate and energy package include deals on six main proposals: energy from renewables, amendments to the EU’s emission tradingscheme, how to distribute reduction effort in the non-traded sector, reducing emissions from new cars, CCS, and transport fuel quality (see Commission’s Q&A on each of the proposals).

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Green energy investments to top 500 mln euro

Some 500 mln euro will be invested in wind farms in northeastern Bulgaria by the end of 2009, said Velizar Kiryakov, chairman of the association of eco energy producers. Another 100 mln levs will be spent on photovoltaic systems.

The favourable climate in this part of the country helps recoup the investments within eight years on average.

US company AES is developing the biggest wind farm project in Bulgaria. It is the investor in the Maritsa East coal-fired power plant and is building a 156 MW wind farm near Kavarna, on the northern coast.

Spanish company Eolica will raise a 160 MW wind park locked between Suvorovo and Valchi Dol, near the northern coastal city of Varna.

A few smaller projects of Austrian and Bulgarian companies with a total capacity of 105 MW will go online by the end of 2008.

Kiryakov sounded the alarm that Bulgaria is lagging drastically behind global and European requirements on percentage of renewable energy. Some 11 pct of Bulgaria’s power output should come from alternative energy sources by 2013 and 16 pct in 2020, under a draft EU directive pending approval by the end of the year. The requirement for industrial producers to buy CO2 emissions will hike electricity prices to include greenhouse gas emissions, whose cost is expected to surge to 50 or 60 euro per tone.

Now renewable energy makes 9.1 pct of Bulgaria total output with wind farms generating 9.0 pct of it. The remainder is produced by wind generators, photovoltaic systems and biomass.

The Government considered a programme covering short-term economic measures (for a nine-month period) to restore the Bulgarian economy. At a press conference today, following the Cabinet’s session, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Simeon Djankov and the Minister of Labour and Social Policy Totyu Mladenov reported that the document was sent to the National Assembly, for additional discussions. It will be adopted by the Cabinet next week and thereafter, it will be presented to the European Commission, as well. “The new Government is a working one and that is the difference compared to the former Cabinet. This fact must be seen by our European partners”, said Simeon Djankov.

The document covers 82 measures, structured in eight parts. In the part “Sustainability of the macroeconomic system”, the maintenance of a balanced budget for this year and activation of Bulgaria’s activity concerning the accession to the ÅRÌ-2 mechanism has been provided. In the part “Sustainability of the financial system”, ineffective expenses reduction in the public budget structures by 15 percent, maintenance of the flat rate of the value added tax at 20 percent and provision of mutual access to the information systems of the Customs and the National Revenue Agency has been laid down. The third part of the measures is related to improving the business environment, the fourth one – to activating the agrarian production. The Deputy Prime Minister Djankov added that in the short-term economic measures, the infrastructure projects to be implemented during that period have been stated in detail. For the first time ever, an analysis of the infrastructure projects in the field of ecology has also been included. The other parts of the programme are related to encouraging employment and social assistance, development of the knowledge-based economy, effective management of the resources from the European Funds.

The document integrated all 32 measures, which were approved yesterday by the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation (NCTC). The discussions in the Working Group at the NCTC of more measures for which no consent has been achieved by the social partners up to now will continue, reported Minister Mladenov. He expressed his satisfaction of the joint work in the tripartite format and in the Sectoral Councils within each Ministry, as well as of the Regional Councils for Tripartite Cooperation, headed by the Regional Governors. In this way, the social dialogue is conducted at many levels guaranteeing good results, added Minister Mladenov.

A tourist and information centre in Pamporovo will open this coming ski season, it will be located next to the first investment bank near ski station one. It will offer discounted ski passes, ski and snow board hire, good restaurant guide, ski lessons, snow board lessons, bus timetables, hotel bookings, apartment rentals, tour guides, car hire, excursions, airport transfers and much more. The website for the tourist and information centre will go live in November the link will be posted when it is available. The website will have a live web camera operating from Studenets the mid station ski centre every day all day, there will also be a forum to discus any thing to do with tourism in Pamporovo, the forum will not mention property sales or self promotion of any kind.

Bulgaria’s prime minister is now Mr Boykov Borisov, he has recently been elected, he himself is heavily invested in Pamporovo and he will be ensuring that Pamporovo will be given all the funding needed to make it a world class resort, Pamporovo will be his priority.

The new terminal has now been completed commissioned and it is operational. Plovdiv airport is just 75km from Pamporovo which is just one hour away. Tour operators would like to fly into Plovdiv and the low cost airlines have expressed a serious interest. The problem is that landing charges for Plovdiv airport are more expensive, the Bulgarian government are looking at ways of reducing this charge to attract the budget airlines.

Pamporovo AD (the company responsible for ski runs and Pamporovo in general) there has been a change in management this year. They have been working all summer to improve all ski runs, taking out trees and rocks etc. All pipe work for the new 180 snow cannons have been installed, 180 snow cannons installed and commissioned, 4 new grooming machines delivered. Ski passes will be reduced this year, the prices will be available to the public within the next 4 weeks. They aim to improve service throughout the resort and are in negotiations with café’s and restaurant to cap prices and improve their service and quality of food.