Bulgaria's coal production has decreased over the past three years, according to statistics of Eurocoal.

The European Association for Coal and Lignite (Eurocoal), the umbrella organisation of the European coal industry, consists of 35 Members from 20 countries amongst which national producers and importers associations, companies and research institutes from Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finnland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

According to Eurocoal, as cited by investor.bg, Bulgaria produced 26.4 million tonnes of lignite and 2.1 million tones of anthracite in 2013.

In 2012, Bulgaria produced 31 million tonnes of lignite and 2.3 tonnes of anthracite.

In 2011, Bulgaria's lignite output stood at 34.5 million tonnes and its anthracite production stood at 2.4 million tonnes.

Bulgaria's coal imports decreased from a rate of 3.3 million tonnes in 2011 to 1.7 million tonnes in 2013.

According to Eurocoal data, the EU27 (excluding Croatia) produced 407 million tonnes of lignite in 2013, compared to 433 million tonnes of lignite in 2012. Anthracite output in the EU also fell from a rate of 128 million tonnes in 2012 to 114 million tonnes in 2013. However, imports registered a slight increase from 211 million tonnes to 216 million tonnes.

According to Eurocoal, Germany holds the largest lignite reserves, at 40.4 gigatonnes, while Poland has the largest reserves of anthracite, at 19.1 gigatonnes.

Bulgaria has reserves of 1.6 gigatonnes of lignite.

Ukraine is the main source of imports to the EU, controlling reserves of 31.8 gigatinnes of anthracite.

According to Eurocoal, around 1/3 of the EU's energy production is generated by coal-fired power plants.

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