Europe is trying to move away from coal and to make the transition to green energy in a period four times shorter than previous similar developments. To do so, the EU needs to be prepared to pay the price.

“If we look historically when we switched from wood to coal and then from coal to oil, for every period it took about 100 years and it was rather an addition than a transition because today we are still using both coal and oil”, said Kiril Ravnachki, a member of the Management Board of Bulgarian company Bulgartransgaz, at the Central-European Natural Gas Congress, organized by Transgaz recently in Sibiu, Romania.

“We have a lot of pressure because we want to make a full transition in only 25 years. The important question would rather be: are we ready to pay the price to do this in such a short time?”

The natural gas prices in South-Eastern Europe are high because of two reasons. First, the EU does not offer enough grants to the TSOs in the region, and second, the energy transmission companies have to recover their past investments through tariffs.

But, as investments will be carried out through cooperation and joint efforts between TSOs from the countries in the region, the security of supply and competition will increase, creating the opportunity for the prices to go down. Cooperation could also be the cheapest way to achieve these objectives.

“In the long run, when all those projects are already executed and they start working, I think the price would get down”, he added.