At first glance, Romania seems to be in a paradoxical position. Nominally, electricity prices remain among the lowest in Europe. Yet, when measured against household and company purchasing power, Romania ranks among the most expensive. Minister of Energy Bogdan Ivan has now set an ambitious target: a 25% reduction in electricity bills within 6 to 12 months, bringing Romania’s prices one percentage point below it.
The promise rests on five measures: operationalizing a Market Maker to increase liquidity and transparency, demanding firmer guarantees in transactions to reduce market risks, rolling out dynamic tariffs to reward consumers shifting usage to cheaper hours, cutting distributors’ costs for their own consumption through a single-purchasing mechanism, and integrating efficiency programs under one roof. Alongside these market reforms, negotiations in Brussels aim to delay the closure of coal plants until 2030, buying time for Romania’s new generation and storage projects to come online.
But while regulatory tweaks can ease volatility and discipline the market, they do not alter the fundamental reality: Romania’s electricity will always be priced within a European system. In an integrated market, the margin for national divergence is limited. Prices will follow supply, demand, and continental trends. In five to seven years, if the current plans unfold as promised, Romania will indeed have stronger generation capacity and the technical conditions for prices below the European average. Yet will households and companies actually feel a lighter burden when paying their bills? Most probably not.
This is where the debate must shift. The real lever of affordability lies not in lowering the nominal kilowatt-hour price, but in increasing the purchasing power of the leu. Romanians buy less energy per unit of reference (PPS) due to differences in productivity, wages, and inflation stability. Until these gaps close, Romanians will continue to perceive electricity as expensive, regardless of nominal figures. Placing all responsibility on the energy sector to “fix prices” creates unreasonable pressure on producers, suppliers, and network operators, when in fact the structural solutions lie elsewhere: in strengthening the currency through macroeconomic stability, in lifting productivity across the economy, in reducing energy intensity, and in advancing efficiency so that each leu spent delivers more real value.
Improving the power purchase of a currency requires deeper structural change. Productivity gains in industry and services, stable macroeconomic policies that tame inflation, investments that boost exports and attract capital, and above all, a sharp reduction in energy intensity—these are the pillars that matter. If households and firms can produce more with less energy, the same bill weighs lighter.
The government’s roadmap for 2032 — doubling nuclear output, expanding gas-fired capacity by 230%, building over 10 GW of new solar and wind, and multiplying storage capacity by ten — speaks to energy independence and security. Yet independence is not enough. The challenge is to transform low nominal electricity prices into genuinely affordable energy, accessible in proportion to what Romanians earn and produce.
The way this target has been expressed also deserves a closer look. As Minister Bogdan Ivan explained, “What we want is [the price] to decrease by at least 25%. That is a reasonable target, taking into account a buffer. So, at the moment, the average paid by an EU consumer is somewhere around 1.28 lei per kWh. In Romania, we are at almost 1.50 lei. The target is for the price in Romania to be at least 1% below the European average.” Yet focusing on the nominal price in lei per kilowatt-hour tells only part of the story. Romania’s challenge is not simply that electricity is 1.50 lei. The deeper issue lies in the purchasing power of the leu itself — held back by lower productivity, lower wages, and less price stability. Until these gaps close, some of Romanians will continue to perceive electricity as expensive, even at nominal prices below the European average.
That is a longer journey, one that transcends six-month or one-year horizons. It is a path where energy policy meets economic convergence, where efficiency meets competitiveness. To paraphrase the Ministry’s slogan, it is not only about “our energy, our future” but also about “our future incomes.”
