The project "LIFE Safe Grid for Burgas" is among the winners in a competition of the Biodiversity Foundation
Elektrorazpredelenie Yug (EP Yug) is among the winners of the Bulgarian Biodiversity Foundation's competition for the Annual Biodiversity and Climate Awards 2023. EP Yug is the Audience Choice winner in the Responsible Business Award category. This category honours businesses that, through their operations, support the conservation or restoration of individual species and habitats, as well as have dedicated environmental programmes and support conservation activities.
EP Yug received the award for its LIFE Safe Grid for Burgas project, which is implemented in partnership with the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds.
The main objective of the project is to protect endangered bird species from electrocution and collision along the Via Pontica migration route, the second most important migration route for wild birds in Europe. From September 2022 to the end of May 2023, the project has secured more than 950 electricity poles, representing over 90 km of safe ground infrastructure for birds. As a result of this work, no bird fatalities have been recorded in the area of the secured poles and grid outages have been minimised. This shows the great success of this activity and the effective technical solutions that have been implemented by the company. By the end of 2023, all 2000 poles foreseen under the project will be secured.
Another four overhead power lines supplying Sarafovo neighbourhood in Burgas will be fully laid underground. The construction works on the underground installation of the overhead power lines with a total length of 20 kilometres started on 28 September 2023.
