Energy efficiency is largely an unexplored field in Bulgaria in terms of achieving it and finding ways to finance energy efficient technologies in the country, participants at a energy efficiency panel within the framework of 10th Central European Initiative (CEI) summit said.

Zdravko Genchev, an executive at the Economic Commission for Europe, an organisation within the UN, said that Bulgaria had been an active participant in an Energy Efficiency 21 initiative of the Commission. 

The initiative, operational since 1991, has been catering to projects aimed at climate change mitigation and is gradually moving from grants, guarantees and subsidies to equity financing for renewable energy sources projects.

Genchev called on Bulgarian companies to take advantage of two equity funds, financed by private investors, and being managed by the Economic Commission for Europe.

While the first fund was already working, the second was in the setup process, Genchev said.

Mario Lazzeri, business development manager at Italy-based energy efficiency consultant d'Apolonia, said that they were to shortly launch a software developed at the request of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Its goal was to benchmark plants in which the EBRD is an investor against peer plants.

During the process of software development, d'Apolonia has developed several indices gauging the degree of energy efficiency of sites against the size of a plant, peers, industry. The software also gives quantitative suggestions into the ways to enhance energy efficiency at the plant.

Lazzeri said that the software would shortly be put to use and probably be disseminated across a larger number of players, not only the EBRD.