Only a small fraction of Romania’s renewable energy pipeline is realistically investable, despite large headline figures, according to Alex Pintea, CEO and cofounder of 4P Renewables.
“The actual investable subset is probably less than 3% if we’re looking at projects larger than 50 MW, which is where institutional investors typically invest,” he said at the Energynomics conference “Regional Approach Istanbul: Investments in energy”.
The company, founded in 2021, focuses exclusively on Romania and develops renewable projects from origination to “ready-to-build” (RTB), while increasingly expanding into long-term asset management, including energy trading, balancing and power purchase agreements (PPAs). To date, 4P Renewables has developed over 1.6 GW of projects, split roughly equally between wind and solar plus battery storage. Around 400 MW have already been transacted to international investors, including Turkish capital, while the firm retains a portion of projects for build-and-operate.
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Pintea pointed to growing investor appetite, driven in part by Romania’s expected accession to the OECD, which is attracting large infrastructure funds targeting multi-asset investments of several hundred megawatts. He also highlighted structural constraints on the supply side, noting that although tens of gigawatts are in the pipeline, only about 10% reach full permitting, with further filtering reducing the bankable pool significantly. Delays in new capacity auctions and grid constraints are likely to push the next wave of fully permitted projects into 2027-2028.
“As the market matures, the key differentiator will be how well assets are managed, not just developed,” Pintea added.
The company is also active in facilitating a Romania-Turkey investment corridor and is working on joint ventures, including a standalone battery storage project that could benefit from EU and government funding schemes.
The conference “Regional Approach Istanbul” was organized by Energynomics, with the support of our partners: Elektra Renewable Support, 4P Renewables, Entek Elektrik, MyEnerji, PowerKonnekt, Solar Today.