The Efficient Romania 2025 Forum was, beyond the presentation of figures and principles aligned with European directives, an exercise in realism. It is not the technologies that are lacking, nor the money – but the bridges between intention and execution. At the center of this perpetual gap is a key actor invoked in multiple interventions and regulations, but too little operationalized: the One-Stop-Shop. A good idea, almost non-existent in the reality on the ground.
Conceived as local technical, financial and social counseling centers, these should become the brain and logistical arm of energy renovation. In reality, many of them are just bureaucratic extensions of overworked county departments, where officials without adequate training work more formally than effectively. Their role is often limited to processing documentation for standardized investments to check off obligations imposed by the NRRP. Very little remains of the integrated vision, promoted in European documents and transposed into Romanian legislation.
Why doesn’t it work? Because a One-Stop-Shop cannot be just an advice desk, but must function as a channel of information, education and trust between the beneficiary citizen and the authority responsible for facilitating the energy transition. This means qualified personnel to explain, simplify, translate what “deep renovation” means, in terms of cost, temporary discomfort and future benefits. It means independent technical advice, phased renovation models, intermediation of service demand with technology supply, if not mediation between co-owners. Almost none of this exists today.
„People that are involved now in the in the one-stop shops are not at all specialists”, said Anca Ginavar, Director in the Ministry for Development. “They are involved 300% now in operational activities on implementing is e4 and e7 investment from the RePowerEU component of the NRRP. They are working really 12 hours a day, but only on this very administrative topic.” She highligted that there are „a lot of administrative barriers” against training the people involved, in partnerships with professional associations, for example. “They [the local authorities] must make public procurements”, for advancing on such partnerships.
If we want Romania to avoid the “abandoned construction site” syndrome of the green transition, we need to professionalize and decentralize these entities – not just check them off.
A second fault line emerged clearly in the Forum panels: local administrative capacity is uneven and often incapable of managing integrated renovation projects. The very communities that would have the most to gain – rural towns or small cities with a huge stock of inefficient housing and vulnerable populations – are the ones losing out in the competition for funds.
Eliza Barnea, coordinator of the Just Transition Campaign at Bankwatch Romania and the technical coordinator involved in the development of the National Social Climate Plan, noted that we were expected to offer targeted support to the most vulnerable local administrative units, those “that have never benefited directly from European funding, that have very low resources for attracting EU funding”. In order to make sure that the absorption capacity exists and the money and the support reach the most vulnerable, „we will have to work directly with these local administrative units”, she urged.
Without trained technical teams, without constant external consultancy, and without support in developing funding applications, these communities risk being excluded from the very programs meant to save them.
The same situation is repeated at the individual level. “The one-stop shops should address more the vulnerable people”, Anca Ginavar also pointed out, but in reality the vulnerable people do not take initiative in educating themselves, as “they don’t have the money and they don’t have the knowledge” for such steps.
The third theme, only apparently marginal, is linked to a reality that discreetly hovers over all intentions: for whom are we renovating? Eliza Barnea has pointed out that many of the blocks of flats targeted for renovation in small towns are already half empty. Unoccupied housing, internal migration and an aging population raise a painful question: is it worth investing in areas with no demographic future? The answer is not technical, but political and community. Renovation can be a solution against decline, but only if it is part of a coherent local regeneration strategy. To renovate without bringing in functions, economy, community – means isolating buildings in a social desert.
The message of this year’s Efficient Romania Forum was clear: the energy transition is an institutional reconstruction operation in which the beneficiary citizens are directly and personally involved. We need educated and passionate ambassadors who will provoke a real and repeated dialogue with the beneficiaries. Otherwise, the one-stop shop will remain a simulacrum of an answer to a complex of not-so-simple problems.
The Efficient Romania Forum was organised by the Energy Policy Group (EPG) with the support of OMV Petrom, on May 26, in Bucharest. The full recording of the event is available in English at: https://www.romania-eficienta.ro/romania-eficienta-forum-2025.
