Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed the EU to step up its decarbonization plans, which have been temporarily disrupted by the Kremlin’s weaponization of energy supplies in Europe. The EU has underpinned Europe’s green transformation with the ambitious ‘Fit-for-55 package’, which has been reinforced by the REPowerEU initiative. Within this long-term framework, the energy and climate targets of individual member states should step on the use of a data-driven analysis of the potential decarbonisation pathways and of the array of measures at the governments’ disposal. Bulgaria is yet to agree on a unifying strategy and faces numerous challenges in decarbonizing key sectors.

A comprehensive overhaul of the country’s energy and climate policy framework is needed to unlock its potential for green economic transformation and energy diversification. This report is the outcome of CSD’s work on designing decarbonisation trajectories for Bulgaria using scenario modelling. The analysis considers the feasibility of Bulgaria’s current long term decarbonisation framework and zooms into the five key economic sectors: energy, buildings, transportation, industry, and agriculture and land use. For the first time, an assessment of Bulgaria’s decarbonization strategy integrates effort sharing targets in the scenarios for Bulgaria as part of the EU’s Effort Sharing Regulation.