Hungary aims to invest up to 16 billion euros in the energy sector by 2030 to increase electricity production and storage capacities and reduce gas consumption, said Minister of Technology and Industry Laszlo Palkovics.
According to a long-term contract signed last year Hungary receives 3.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Russia, via Bulgaria and Serbia, and another billion cubic meters through a pipeline from Austria.
The contract with Russian Gazprom was concluded for 15 years, Reuters reminds us.
In July, Prime Minister Viktor Orban‘s government lifted a long-standing price cap on utility services for households with higher consumption, which, according to Minister Palkovics, will likely reduce consumption.
However, more effort is needed, the minister emphasized, to reduce the share of gas in Hungary’s final energy consumption from last year’s 35 percent to 26 percent by the end of the decade.
Most of that improvement will come from large-scale electrification, the minister adds.
– The current situation is definitely motivating for several reasons – said Palkovics at a conference organized by the financial news portal portfolio.hu.
By 2024, installed capacities for solar energy utilization will reach eight gigawatts, according to him, with additional demand from the industrial sector by 2030, which requires further investments in reorganizing the electrical grid and energy storage capacities.
– The development of the electricity grid and storage capacities near solar power plants is not at the level it should be – said the minister, adding that the government will present more detailed plans in October.
He also stated that the planned capacity expansion project could extend the operational life of the reactors at the Paks nuclear power plant by two decades.
