1,800,000 people, or about 30% of the population of Bulgaria, fall into the group of energy poor households that do not have access to basic energy services for adequate heating, cooling, lighting and energy supply for household appliances.
An additional 365,000 have the status of vulnerable customers. In Bulgaria, people who were unable to keep their homes warm enough are almost 21%, with our country ranking first in the EU in this indicator. This is stated in an opinion of the Economic and Social Council.
Recommendations of the Economic and Social Council
According to it, our country is lagging behind in introducing mechanisms for assessing, identifying and monitoring energy poor households. One of the recommendations is to add an inflation index to the formula for determining the official poverty line in order to overcome the abandonment of the income criterion in determining the status of households.
In addition to writing a strategy for dealing with energy poverty, the document proposes to discuss a mechanism for determining the level of compensation in the conditions of a liberalized market, with compensation being granted differentiated according to income and being limited to electricity bills for the household's main residence.
According to ESC, the state's efforts should be directed towards achieving interconnection of the electricity system of Bulgaria and Southeastern Europe with those of Central and Northern Europe.
In July last year, the average monthly price of electricity in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece was over 110% higher than that in Central European countries such as Germany, Austria, Czech Republic.
"As a result, Bulgarian business and the Bulgarian state, through the compensations it provides, pay an unbearably high price for electricity, and this has an extremely adverse impact on economic competitiveness and the standard of living," the ESC also said in its statement.
Countries in Europe
The increase in the number of energy-poor Europeans in recent years is due to Russia's war in Ukraine, which caused serious disruptions in the energy markets, observers quoted by BGNES note. Currently, 41 million people or 9.2% of the Union's citizens are energy poor.
The situation is even more serious in the Western Balkan countries that are outside the EU. In Albania and North Macedonia, people who cannot maintain normal heat in their homes are 33.8% and 30.7%, respectively. This makes almost a third of the population forced to live in cold homes.
The fewest energy poor in the EU are in Finland, where only 2.7% of citizens face this social problem. The most energy poor live in Turkey - almost 13 million people. Our southeastern neighbor had the second cheapest price of natural gas in euros, and the price of electricity was the third cheapest. Despite this, a huge number of people live without heat.
In Spain, 8.5 million people were unable to maintain heat in their homes, and in France their number was 8.1 million. In Germany, this figure is 5.3 million, and in Italy - 5.1 million.
In Romania and Greece, the energy poor are 2 million and 1.9 million, respectively.