Romania has a great opportunity to learn from other European countries how to manage the huge interest in investments in the renewable energy sector, but the country needs to be proactive and not just a follower of the market trends.
”What Romania needs is speed and to be proactive. To me it seems that the country is just a follower of the trend of the market”, said Ioannis Kalapodas, Head of the Romanian Office, of European Energy, at the conference “More renewables for Romania”, organized by Energynomics.
Despite de huge opportunity Romania has in this field, one of the problems is the unclear legislation and, more importantly, the misinterpretation of the legislation, which creates a higher country risk and generates instability.
”When you have the state misinterpreting the law it gives a feeling of instability and fear to move on to invest”, he added.
On the other hand, as huge as the renewable potential may be, the capacity of renewable installations is very small, and the legislation is quite not clear, meaning that investors are facing retroactive measures.
According to Kalapodas, Romania should use the EU funds to invest rather in energy infrastructure, because when the new investments will be commissioned they will have to have a strong grid to deliver the electricity they produce.
”The investors are here to support the country reaching the targets of green energy and we have to have the grid to deliver that energy”, said Kalapodas.
He added that is unclear what is the plan of the Romanian government about connecting the future offshore wind turbines to the grid and also the energy capacity need to supply the increasing demand for energy due to the penetration of electric vehicles.
”How the government will connect the offshore wind turbines? What is the plan in place considering that the state, not here, but everywhere, it is quite slow in reactions compared to the investors? Same question for the storage investments. I hear many talks about the legislation but I don’t hear talks about the change in mobility. The EVs have increased significantly and we see them all across Europe. Starting in 2030 all the car factories will have to produce exclusively EVs and we have to be ready for this. Is it unknown what is it the needed power capacity and how it is calculated? It is included or is separated from the country Green Deal targets?”, he concluded.
The conference “More renewables for Romania” was organized by Energynomics with the support of our partners among which ABB, ACE Industrial Software, BCR, Consolight, Eaton Electric, Elektra Renewable Support, EnergoPower, European Energy, Finder, Geminox, Huawei, ING Bank, LAPP Romania, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Phoenix Contact, Photomate, Prime Batteries Technology, REI Grup, Renomia-Gallagher, Valmont, Volt, Wiren România, Wise Finance Solutions.