Financing renewable energy projects

The Ministry of Energy has launched two funding programmes for renewable energy and storage projects. More than €800m is available from the modernisation fund, but experts say a strategy is also needed to develop electricity grids to take energy from prosumers.

A correspondence from Cristiana Sabau: "The Bistrita-based company, which specialises in the production of car batteries, has invested 20 million lei in the largest photovoltaic park in Transylvania under the prosumers' regime. This is what manager Alin Ioanes told a forum on green energy.

Alin Ioanes: "We find ourselves in a situation where we produce green energy, but we can't use it all, we don't have anywhere to supply this energy many times or we supply it at a cost close to zero or at a very low price."

There are also problems with getting energy back into the national system.

Mihaela Suciu, general manager of Distributia Energie Electrica Romania: Everyone is talking about the transition to green energy, we are talking about digitisation, these are processes that, frankly, caught us a bit off guard, because the networks we manage, in 18 counties, 80% are before 2020. They are networks that were designed for one-way distribution, from the producer to the end user."

Translated by: Radu Matei