Nikolay Dinev, 34, has worked as a coal miner for 12 years, but now faces an uncertain future as an EU-wide exit from coal is discussed at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
“It will be a disaster... The closure is inevitable,” Dinev told Agence France-Presse on the outskirts of the Maritsa East complex in central Bulgaria.
Bulgaria — which joined the EU in 2007, but remains one of the bloc’s poorest and most coal-dependent states — had long refrained from setting a deadline to end power production from coal.
Photo: AFP
However, the Bulgarian government last month said it would propose 2038 or 2040 as possible end dates as part of its engagements under the European Green Deal.
Miners’ trade unions protested in the capital, Sofia, calling for the government to save the sector that employs about 30,000 people.
Maritsa East employs 12,000 of them and provides more than one-third of Bulgaria’s electricity.
Mining has for decades been the main source of income in the region. The local deposits — discovered by a French geologist in the 19th century and later developed by Soviet engineers — still hold 1.5 billion tonnes of coal, Bulgarian Ministry of Energy data show.
The government has proposed setting up a state company to convert mining areas into industrial parks, giving jobs to former workers, but Dinev wishes he could “push back the process [of closing the mines] by 30 years” until his retirement.
“I left the army because I got 500 leva [US$296] per month, and here they offered me double,” he said, adding that this father had worked in the mines for 31 years, despite his childhood home having been engulfed by their extension.
Dinev now earns 1,500 leva a month for 12 hours a day repairing equipment — the average salary in the poorest EU country — which is “not bad for the region,” he said.
He has saved enough to build a house for his family, where they grow fruit and vegetables, and raise chicken and rabbits.
The planned shutdown is likely to affect Bulgaria as a whole.
“It’s not only the workers in the mine, but all those who depend on them. My car mechanic is also anxious,” Dinev said.
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