In 2019, Bulgarian net greenhouse gas emissions were around 46 Mt CO2-eq. By setting a 2030 target of 47.553 Mt CO2-eq, Bulgaria is actually planning to increase its emissions in its NECP. In addition, the Bulgarian NECP foresees a decrease in the capacity of carbon sinks from -9.97 Mt CO2-eq to -8.6 Mt CO2-eq by 2030. This is a clear alarm bell, which shows that Bulgaria’s plans are not good enough to address the climate crisis.

The NECP is quite unambitious compared to Bulgaria’s potential. The 2030 final energy consumption target set in the Plan, for instance, is higher than the levels of final energy consumption of the last 20 years. This is despite constant energy efficiency improvements in the industry sector. In addition, from 1990 to 2019 Bulgaria significantly expanded its renewable energy sources (in gross final energy consumption) from 1.91% to 21.56%. The current target for 2030 (27.09%) is therefore very low, especially given that the price of renewables is already significantly lower than 1990s and 2000s and that it will continue to decrease in the future, as production costs decrease and  EU policies are strengthened.

While preparing the NECP tracker, Bulgarian NGOs also detected the lack of reliable data for sectoral emissions targets in the NECP. Only two sectoral targets were given in Annex 1 of the NECP (for the industry and buildings sector). However, further research and cross-checking has highlighted significant divergences with data available at the EU level (EEA, Eurostat), and the targets were consequently not included in the tracker.

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NOTE: When targets or projections from NECP or from another sectoral strategy document are available, the tool calculates the difference between the realised data and the target in percentage. The percentages that can be found on the country pages and on the right side of each graph are based on this calculation. If the country does not have projections or targets for the year of the latest realised data, the percentages do not exist.