Maritsa 3 power station is a 120 MW coal power station in Khaskovo, Bulgaria. It ranks #23 of 55 Bulgaria power plants by installed capacity. Commissioned in 1971, it is around 55 years old — an older, legacy facility. Its annual emissions of 73,524 t CO₂/yr (EU ETS verified (EUTL 2023)) are equivalent to about 17k cars driven for a year. In context, coal supplies about 22.5% of Bulgaria's electricity; the national grid averages 276 gCO₂/kWh (71.9% low-carbon) (2025).
Plant data: WRI Global Power Plant Database (CC BY 4.0), id WRI1008058.
Known, modelled and calculated values are kept separate. Missing fields are shown as unavailable.
The capacity and/or fuel fields on this page include a source-backed provenance label from GEM, an official registry, Wikidata, OSM, or a cross-source match.
capacity: Wikidata P2109; fuel: WRI GPPD
At 120 MW, Maritsa 3 power station is below the median coal plant in Bulgaria (180 MW). Technically it is described as subcritical. Its current lifecycle status is “Mothballed” — so it is not yet, or no longer, generating at full output. Coal plants burn pulverised coal to raise high-pressure steam for a turbine; they run as baseload but are the most carbon-intensive mainstream source and the first targeted for retirement or efficiency retrofits.
Capacity comparison computed from the WRI Global Power Plant Database; fuel-type context is general engineering background.
This facility's annual emissions are roughly equivalent to:
Equivalencies via US EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies; emissions per EU ETS verified (EUTL 2023) (measured for US EPA/EU ETS, modelled for Climate TRACE).
The #9 largest coal power plant of 14 in Bulgaria by capacity.
Bulgaria has 14 coal power plants in this dataset, together about 5,419 MW of capacity.
Coordinates 42.0519, 25.6231 from WRI Global Power Plant Database (CC BY 4.0). View on OpenStreetMap.
Maritsa 3 power station is a 120 MW coal power plant in Khaskovo, Bulgaria, commissioned in 1971.
Maritsa 3 power station has measured emissions of about 73,524 tonnes of CO₂ per year (EU ETS verified (EUTL 2023)).
