Denmark's Greentech Energy Systems Says Bulgaria Most Likely Location for SEEurope Expansion

“Romania could also be an interesting country, and the Czech Republic. These are the three [states] that we are looking at, but there’s no doubt that Bulgaria is the one that we are, we can say, most far advanced in, but it’s still in the investigation stage,” Mark Fromholt told SeeNews from Denmark.

Bulgaria’s state news agency BTA reported earlier on Wednesday an official from a western Bulgarian municipality as saying that Greentech had expressed interest in building a 150 million euro ($210.7 million) wind park with a 171 megawatt (MW) capacity in the region.

“This does not sound like a wrong number – that would be the amount of a project that we would like to do in a country. We will make a big project or many projects,” said Fromholt. He denied, however, that the company had any specific plans for the time being.

“Under normal circumstances and normal market conditions, that [taking a decision] would be in the next three to six months,” Fromholt said.

Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, should generate at least 11% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and 16% by 2020 under agreements with the bloc.

At present, the share of renewable energy produced in Bulgaria is around 5.0% with wind turbines having a token contribution with only up to 120 MW installed capacity. The potential for wind farms in Bulgaria is roughly 2,200 MW in capacity, according to estimates of Swiss energy group Atel.

Greentech Energy Systems A/S (www.greentech.dk) has operations in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway and Poland. At present, it owns fully or as a majority partner an installed production capacity of 75 MW, another 171.2 MW are under construction, 1,220.6 MW are in the development portfolio and 400 MW are in the screening process.