Bulgarian court stops largest EU-funded environmental project, citing health risks

On Thursday Bulgaria’s Supreme Administrative Court stopped the controversial project to build a refuse-derived fuel (RDF) waste incinerator in the centre of Sofia, which would have used EU funding to turn the capital’s waste into heat and electricity.

Initiated nearly a decade ago, the environmental group For the Earth challenged the project’s potential risks to human health.

In Thursday’s decision, the administrative court terminated the projects and annulled the environmental assessment issued in 2015, citing a lack of evidence that the proposed technology for burning processed waste is safe for the public.

The court decision, seen by Euractiv Bulgaria, reads: “Fully formal, the administrative body agreed on the environmental assessment report, despite unclear circumstances regarding the expected impact of the installation’s activity on human health and its impact on the environment.”

The court ruling ended the €185 million project, which sparked protests from Sofia residents over fears of further deterioration in air quality. During the winter months, in particular, the air in the Bulgarian capital is usually polluted to levels several times above safety standards.

Two years ago, the court had already ordered the Sofia municipality to take urgent measures to improve the air quality in the city with a population of over 1.2 million people.

The RDF waste incinerator was to be built near Sofia’s centre on the site of the municipal central heating company Toplofikatsia.

In early 2023, Toplofikatsia Sofia was forced to terminate the tender to select the company to build the installation due to irregularities. Initially, a consortium of Bulgarian, Turkish, and three Chinese companies was chosen to make the plant. The auction procedure was challenged, and the court ruled it had been carried out illegally.

The court rulings mean that the Sofia Municipality, which owns Toplofikatsia, will ultimately lose the EU funding for the project worth €90 million. The total value of the project is almost €185 million. The municipality will have to return the €35 million already allocated by the EU.

The biggest problem facing the Bulgarian capital is that it must seek an alternative for the RDF fuel produced by the city’s waste plant, which was supposed to be used in the failed project for an installation to produce heat and electricity. The Sofia waste plant was also built with EU funding.

RDF is currently burned in Bulgarian cement plants, but interest in it has declined for years, and the fuel must be stored near Sofia.

The waste plant can produce up to 180,000 tonnes of RDF per year, but in reality, it has not yet reached these quantities, as there is nowhere to recover them.

Refuse-derived fuel, or RDF, is fuel produced from various types of waste, such as municipal solid waste (MSW), industrial waste, or commercial waste.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)

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