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Romania has learnt a difficult lesson from the way it has developed the wind and photovoltaic energy industry; in the future, new legislation must be preceded by accurate assessments and thorough studies, Energy Minister Victor Grigorescu told the Berlin Energy Forum, according to a posting on his personal Facebook page.
Grigorescu participated on March 17 to 18 in the second Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue. "In Berlin, within the conference on the transition to a green economy, I have reaffirmed that everyone must choose their own energy mix. We cannot ignore the energy security and the continuity of supply when we talk about how we reach the decarbonisation targets. Policies must be technologically neutral to allow all technologies to have a real contribution, including that of nuclear sector. I have reminded that Romania has already exceeded the target for renewable energy stipulated for 2020," the minister wrote on Friday on Facebook.
Grigorescu refers to the fact that investors in renewable energy have received substantial subsidies in past years, with Romania having had at one time the most generous scheme in the EU. However, with the increasingly higher impact in electricity bills, subsidies were reduced. On Thursday, State Secretary Cristian Busu announced that Romania had reached a renewable energy share of 27pct, having exceeded since last year the assumed target of 24pct for 2020. The capacities of electricity production from renewable sources reached a total installed capacity of 5.153 MW at end-January 2016, according to the data centralized by Transelectrica, the state-owned operator of the national energy transmission grid.
Renewable energy producers receive free green certificates that they sell on a specialized market for an additional gain. These green certificates are paid by all consumers in Romania, including the population, in their electricity bills. For 2016, the mandatory quota of electricity produced from renewable energy is 12.15pct of the gross end consumption of electricity, according to decision taken by the Government on 30 December 2015. Renewable energy producers argue that the authorities' decisions make it impossible for them to sell green certificates and thus many relevant companies will go bankrupt.
