Author: Dimitar Sabev, "Klimateka"
Dimitar Sabev has a doctorate in economics and currently works at the Institute for Economic Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of numerous scientific and popular publications and several books, including Marketing, Consumption and Economic Growth (2022) and Mountainous Regions of Bulgaria: Economy and Population (2024). His interests are focused on the so-called. economics: the point where nature, market and culture intersect. In the summer of 2026, his new monograph Coal Regions After the End of Coal Mining is due to be published.
The climate policies of the European Commission in recent years have purposefully limited coal mining, but the sector's crisis in Europe is much older. The market began to displace it as early as the 1950s and especially after the 1970s, when supplies of oil, gas and cheaper imported coal left hundreds of thousands of European miners unemployed. The drive for a clean living environment in the 1980s and 1990s and the fight against acid rain and toxic smog in cities led to the closure of many thermal power plants in densely populated areas.
The increased importance of the climate factor after 2015 seems to sign the final verdict of coal. It is significant that between 1991 and 2024, coal production in the EU shrank by 79% (according to calculations based on the Eurostat energy balance, with production measured in tons of oil equivalent in view of the different calorific values of the types of coal).
This process did not bypass Bulgaria: already in 2024, electricity production from coal caught up with that from renewable sources. Just five years earlier, the ratio was more than three times in favor of coal (calculations are based on annual ENTSO-E data).
There are also obstacles along this path - such as the energy crisis of 2022, when 35.5 million tons of coal were mined in Bulgaria, the highest level since 2015. Accordingly, carbon emissions escalated. The state-owned “Maritsa East 2” TPP was ranked among the 10 largest industrial sources of greenhouse gases in the EU in the same year, with verified emissions of nearly 11 million tons of CO₂.
What does 11 million tons of CO₂ mean?
The emissions of the “Maritsa East 2” TPP in 2022 can be compared to:
2.4 million cars with internal combustion engines, traveling 15 thousand km per year – approximately the entire active car fleet of Bulgaria.
1.6 million people, whose annual consumption (housing, transport, food and other activities) generates the same amount of carbon emissions – the population of Sofia and Plovdiv, taken together.
180 million trees needed to absorb such an amount of carbon within one year.
However, 2022 is an exception to the general trend for Bulgaria, as can be seen from the graph: between 2015 and 2025, the extraction of lignite and brown coal in our country has decreased by more than half.
Fig. 1 Coal mining and coal-fired power generation / Source: NSI, ENTSO-E
The prospects for the Bulgarian coal power industry are definitely not good, and this is far from being due only to European climate policies. State-owned enterprises in the Bulgarian coal sector have always been strikingly inefficient. At the same time, the energy transition in Greece, Poland and Romania is proceeding more successfully than in Bulgaria, precisely because coal mining there is controlled by public enterprises.
What do the data on state-owned enterprises show?
As of December 31, 2015, “Mini Maritsa-iztok“ EAD employed 7,294 people. As of September 30, 2025, the company's staff numbered 6,261 people. In other words, for a period during which production fell by 52%, the reduction in personnel is limited to 14%. In this situation, it is not surprising that for the first nine months of 2025, state-owned coal mines reported a loss of over 107 million euros (or 209 million leva) - after the loss for the same period in 2024 was 54 million euros. Against the background of accumulating budget deficits, such a financial result for a state-owned company cannot be ignored. Currently, around and over 60% of the mines' expenses are related to personnel.
The results of the Maritsa East 2 TPP are no different: after reporting a loss of about 52 million euros in 2024, the plant lost another 120 million euros in the first nine months of 2025. The big factor is the price of carbon quotas, which form about 55% of the actual operating costs of the state-owned enterprise. But here too, the number of employees is far more stable than the amount of energy produced: a check in the National Social Security Institute registers as of April 2026 speaks of 2,252 socially insured persons, while their number for the same month in 2015 was 2,462 people. The company's staff has been cut by 8.5% during a period during which production has shrunk by 52%.
Bulgaria: Five times lower productivity than Germany
The above-mentioned disparities are impressive and require urgent measures to protect the public interest. However, international comparisons show that the inefficiency of the Bulgarian coal sector is even more serious.
Let's compare the productivity - the annual output of one worker - in lignite mines in Bulgaria and several countries around the world. Lignite is mined in Germany, the USA, and until recently on the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece (the last two coal-fired power units there were closed in 2024). The depth of the lignite deposit in the Peloponnese and in “Maritsa-East“ is practically the same: 175 and 182 meters respectively.
The German standard is that one worker in the coal sector should mine about 8 thousand tons of lignite per year: in West Germany the norm is 8-9 thousand tons, in East Germany it is 7-8 thousand tons. It is characteristic of the country that there the productivity statistics include not only miners, but also workers in thermal power plants. Using this standard, in 2024 in the Rhineland per employee there will be 6200 tons of lignite.
If we apply the same yardstick to Bulgaria we will arrive at disturbing results (see Table 1). According to trade union data, currently 16,100 people are directly employed in the coal sector, of which 13,500 people are in “Maritsa-East“. In 2025, the productivity of one worker was 1068 tons: more than five times lower than that in Germany.
The lag is even greater compared to lignite mines in the USA - but also in the Peloponnese in Greece, where in past years a worker extracted over 10 thousand tons per year. It is true that in “Maritsa-East“ there were better days, when 1 worker extracted about 3 thousand tons. Even so, the lag of the Bulgarian coal sector is chronic.
Table 1. Coal mining productivity in Bulgaria and other countries. Sources: The data are calculations by the author based on the information published in the Annual Financial Statements and in the Annual Activity Reports of “Mini Maritsa-iztok“ EAD, published in the Commercial Register; Statistik der Kohlenwirtschaft; Alves Dias et al. (2018); U.S. Energy Information Administration; KITUB; NSI.
The data show that the productivity of Bulgarian coal mining in 2025 is between 3 and 5 times lower (and probably in places even more) than that in comparable coal mining regions and countries, lagging nearly six times behind Germany and almost nine times behind the USA.
The price of the bloated state
The blame for this inefficiency lies not in geology or insufficient mechanization, but in a not very academic, but accurate word - – “feeder“. The fact that between 2011 and 2022 the state-owned TPP, instead of investing in energy transition and increasing its productivity, supported… a professional football club is eloquent. But this is a small detail. Informed experts from the sector claim that a power plant the size of the Maritsa-Iztok 2 TPP in the USA would be serviced by about 700-800 people: two and three times fewer than the current staff. Incidentally, the two power plants with American owners in the Maritsa-Iztok complex, which are currently not producing, employed far fewer people per unit of power than the state-owned one (see Table 2).
Table 2. Productivity of coal-fired thermal power plants in Bulgaria in 2023 / Source: The data are calculations by the author based on the information published in the Annual Financial Statements and in the Annual Activity Reports of “Mini Maritsa-iztok“ EAD, published in the Commercial Register; Statistik der Kohlenwirtschaft; Alves Dias et al. (2018); U.S. Energy Information Administration; KINTB; NSI.
We must make some reservations regarding the data in Table 2. First, for the two “American” TPPs, only the number of people directly employed in the production process is indicated. Second, comparisons with “Brickel“ and “Bobov Dol TPP“ may be misleading, since publicly available information about the structure of costs and employment in the so-called “Kovachki“ empire raises doubts as to how far the reported indicators reflect the real economic picture. Officially, the staff of “Brickel“ – an enterprise with revenues under 50 million euros – is 1250 people, of which over 100 are managers, analysts and administrators, which raises questions about the comparability of the data.
Is there a future for the coal sector?
The stake here is the funds for the energy transition, paid by the European Commission and the national budget. The compensations of those laid off or early retired in the energy transition in Greece and Poland are in the order of 30-40 thousand euros. The level for Bulgaria is unlikely to be lower. If we assume that the staff of the companies in the coal sector exceeds the actual need by, for example, 5,000 people, this means 150-200 million euros of public (Bulgarian and European) money, which will be directed not to support miners, but to individuals who are not among those actually affected by the energy transition, but are benefited by political and administrative dependencies.
Such waste will not go unnoticed and will generate a high-level political reaction that could harm the entire Bulgarian energy sector.
The irony is that with more realism and cooperation from those affected, the coal sector could retain a place in the national energy mix. We live in a world of geopolitical confrontation and access to our own energy resource is a value that should not be naively ignored. Like Germany and Poland, coal power in Bulgaria could be optimized and, if necessary, continue to perform a stabilizing function for another decade.
Meanwhile, qualified specialists who are gradually being laid off could be provided with decent replacement jobs in industry through a targeted national industrial policy. For people with lower qualifications, the reclamation of dozens of square kilometers of disturbed terrain in the heart of Bulgaria could become one of the most important employment opportunities.
The stubborn resistance to change by the management of the state energy sector, combined with the “barricade“ tactics of the trade unions, could put an end to any favorable perspective.