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The present waste fee tariff in Bulgaria is calculated per mill on property value, which is the grounding reason why the business pays much more than the population for the generated waste amounts, thus cross-subsidizing the population costs. Legislative amendments enforced in 2017 require the waste fee to be determined based on waste amounts and a number of waste service users. Since then, the actual enforcement date for the introduction of the new waste tariff has been postponed several times due to a number of serious challenges that may undermine the future operation of the waste management systems in the municipalities. These challenges cover the need for an entire transformation of the current waste collection and transportation system, require significant additional costs in terms of capital investments, necessary massive awareness-raising campaigns, insufficient data, affordability and willingness to pay issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the effect of the financial discount rate on key financial indicators in the cost-benefit analysis used in the assessment of public investment projects - financial net present value, financial internal rate of return and financial gaps. It then estimates the Weighted Average Cost of Capital as an alternative approach for determining the discount rate. The model builds on the debt/equity ratio in the overall project investment portfolio and Capital Asset Pricing Model based on: (1) the return gained from investment in risk-free instruments; (2) the risk premium for the state (the so-called asymmetric state-related risk); (3) the business risk premium; (4) the project asymmetric risk premium. The model is then applied to an environmental investment project in Bulgaria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New technical safety requirements for the future NPP have been set after the Fukushima accident in 2011. This has led to costs increase and new models for NPP construction financing. Along with these models the article discusses technical problems associated with the building of a financial model to determine the financial viability of a project for a new NPP construction, and the decision to be made in defining its main parameters. The outcomes of the study have direct implications and applications that may be used in studies and decision for constructing NPP Belene. Keywords: financing, financial models, nuclear power plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]