* Funding gaps, uncertainty delay nuclear plans
* New power generation badly needed to meet future demand
* For nuclear projects in CEE []
By Luiza Ilie
BUCHAREST, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Cash shortages and uncertainty
over energy prices are delaying or cutting back nuclear power
projects across central and southeastern Europe, threatening
energy supply and a push to abandon polluting coal.
Investors are retreating, worried that future energy prices
might not give them a good return.
Many countries in the region have looked to increasing
atomic power to provide a stable energy supply and to help meet
tough new EU emissions targets.
But high capital costs, dwindling interest from power firms,
uncertainty about future carbon emissions prices and tangled
planning permission are all slowing plans.
Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic are some of the
European Union's least energy dependant states, but the delays
put them at risk of boosting imports in a decade or so as aging
coal-fired plants are shut or become too expensive to run.
Last week power groups GDF Suez <GSZ.PA>, RWE <RWEG.DE> and
Iberdrola <IBE.MC> quit plans in Romania to add two more units
to its only nuclear power plant by 2017. Czech CEZ's <>
left the project in 2010.
Romania is left with just two foreign partners and will be
casting for new investors, a search that will likely delay the
project. []
Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Poland have also hit delays
in their plans to build or expand nuclear generation.
"Investment in new power generation needs to occur, it has
to be built and it has to be built now," said Michael Labelle,
an independent energy expert based in Budapest.
"There is a collection of issues inhibiting the building ...
funding is a problem, governments are less willing to put in
money, the EU's plans of having competitive pricing takes away
some of the security of knowing what prices will be in future."
POWER NEEDED
After a tender failed to attract investors for a new nuclear
plant in Lithuania, its president said it needed to rethink its
alternatives []
In the Czech Republic, state-controlled power group CEZ,
central Europe's biggest utility, postponed a tender in 2010 to
expand its Temelin nuclear plant. Slovenia was expected to
approve a decision to build a second plant by 2020 last year,
but the decision has yet to come.
Croatia will likely not decide before 2012 on whether to
partner Slovenia or Hungary for a plant or build a second one on
its own territory.
Poland, which generates most of its power from coal, wants
to build a nuclear power plant but has struggled to find skilled
workers and clear legislation needed to move the project along.
"The world has changed ... everybody is a bit more careful
about spending big money," said Stephan Werthschulte, head of
the power generation business at consultants Accenture.
"These projects are more complex than in the past ... the
apetite for risk is lower so you have more partners."
Romania, where energy production is largely in state hands,
estimates it will need to shut down and replace a third of its
power plants by 2020. It sees demand rising by 2 percent on
average each year until then.
But with the exception of some small scale new hydro power
units, it last built a new power unit in 2007, when its second
706 megawatt nuclear reactor went on stream.
The economy ministry is now waiting to see if remaining
partners Enel <ENEI.MI> and a local unit of ArcelorMittal
<ISPA.AS> would like more shares in the future two units.
"We will then launch a new tender for new investors," a
ministry official has said. "There should be interest for it."
(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Michael Kahn and William
Hardy)
