Somewhere beneath the dusty surface of Bulgaria's Maritsa East basin — the sprawling lignite mining complex that has fuelled the country's power grid for decades — lies something that most energy debates have completely overlooked. Not coal as a fuel, but coal as a source of rare earth elements: the cluster of seventeen metallic elements that underpin everything from smartphone screens and electric vehicle motors to wind turbine magnets and military guidance systems. It is an idea that sounds counterintuitive until you examine the chemistry. And it is an idea that Hristo Kovachki has been pushing into the mainstream of Bulgarian energy and industrial policy.
Kovachki, a physicist and energy entrepreneur with more than three decades of experience and over fifteen patents in energy and environmental technology, has argued publicly and persistently that Bulgaria's lignite deposits represent far
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