Two of the largest companies in the field in the world, EDF from France and Itochu from Japan, have shown their interest in the Tarnița-Lăpuşteşti project and proactively came to the ministry to make available all their resources and expertise, said, on Thursday, the Minister of Energy, Sebastian Burduja, at a specialized event.
“My soul project, and please support it, is Tarnița-Lăpuşteşti (Tarnița-Lăpuşteşti pumped-storage hydropower plant). It is not only my project, it is a project of Romania and it has been undertaken over the decades, but unfortunately it was never completed. That’s why we resumed the feasibility study and we are in the middle of the public procurement procedure. Besides, last night too I had a very good meeting with two of the biggest companies in the field in world, EDF from France and Itochu from Japan, who have shown their interest in this project and proactively came to the ministry to make available all their resources and expertise. I explained the stage of the procedure and after the award of the feasibility study, it will be a competitive procedure for the selection of private partners for this project,” said Sebastian Burduja, according to Agerpres.
Regarding the area of solar and wind energy, the minister emphasized that Romania has made progress and has greatly accelerated investments.
“Through PNRR, the contracts signed are for half a billion euros for an installed capacity of 620 megawatts. Consider that, practically, we assumed 950 megawatts in Investment 1 installed capacity and we are not even 25% of the money contracted and we already have 620 megawatts, so we’re two-thirds of the way through the target. Probably by the end of the call – and we really want to close it by the end of this year at the latest – we’ll have funding, hopefully new, for 2,000 or more than 2,000 megawatts of power installed through the PNRR. Similarly, in the Modernization Fund, the signed contracts are for projects of over 6.2 billion euros. It is a really significant figure – and this also means investments in the transport network , 9 contracts with Transelectrica, the contracts with the distributors. There is a call for over 4 billion lei and next week, I think, we will sign another 10 contracts with the distributors, so line reinforcements, modernizations – and this also means an accommodation of the energy system for the new phenomena, the increase of prosumers, the increase of consumption points,” added the Minister of Energy.