Only nine per cent of non-financial enterprises in Bulgaria are using renewable energy sources, in a limited way in the forms of solar, biomass or biofuels, a survey has found.

It is mostly companies in trade and services that are using renewable energy, according to a survey by the Institute for Economic Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the results of which were released on March 23 2012.

Households said that they would seek alternative sources of energy in two cases, if the price of electricity was increased and if their monthly income was reduced.

The most commonly used forms of renewable energy in Bulgaria were biomass heating, at 58.3 per cent, followed by solar heating of water, 12.5 per cent, and waste from agriculture and forestry, 4.6 per cent.

About a 10th of households surveyed said that they would be willing to pay more for electricity produced by renewable sources. A separate 75 per cent said that they would be prepared to pay up to 10 per cent of their monthly electricity bill for renewable energy.

Analysis of the results of the survey found that despite the financial crisis and inter-company debt, but with incentives and national policies, business in Bulgaria would invest an average of 1.68 per cent of annual turnover in renewable energy over the next five years.

This means, according to the institute, that the use of funds for investment in the sector would be up to 680 million leva.

The study's authors believe that it is possible that firms would allocated larger shares of their annual turnovers, because the production of renewable energy saves spending by end-users on building power networks and losses of energy in transmission.