SOFIA (Reuters) - General Electric is considering investing up to 800 million euros ($1.01 billion) to build a wind energy park in Bulgaria, the economy ministry said on Tuesday.
The U.S. energy giant had already explored the town of Mirkovo, some 60 km east of Sofia, as a possible site for the wind park with a total capacity of up to 500 megawatts.
"The company is interested in developing wind farms in Bulgaria," the ministry said after economy minister Petar Dimitrov met General Electric officials.
Wind park projects in Bulgaria have mushroomed in the last several months as U.S. energy company AES Corp. and Austrian power utility EVN announced plans to build wind parks near the Black Sea coast with a total capacity of some 300 MW.
Last week, Swiss leading energy company Alpiq said it would invest 80 million euros in a 50 MW wind energy park near the town of Kazanluk in central Bulgaria [ID:nLB278328].
Currently, the European Union newcomer's installed wind power capacity totals 70 MW, generating just over 1 percent of electricity consumption. Bulgaria gets about 43 percent of its power from coal and 40 percent from nuclear energy.
The Balkan country plans to increase the share of renewable energy to 16 percent by 2020 as part of European Union efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and expand green energy production.
(Reporting by Irina Ivanova; Editing by Keiron Henderson)
