Sebastian Burduja, MP, president of PNL Bucharest, Minister of Energy between June 2023 and June 2025
“What must now be taken to Brussels is a rule, not an exception: no capacity is closed before its replacement is actually producing. Not designed, not contracted, not inaugurated. To produce. Written in the commitment with the Commission, so that it no longer depends on who the minister is,” says Sebastian Burduja, MP, president of PNL Bucharest, Minister of Energy between June 2023 and June 2025, in an exclusive interview for Energynomics. The argument? The energy crisis. “On July 28, Unit 1 at Cernavodă stopped. On August 13, at 10:53, Unit 2 also stopped. Nothing had broken. The Danube had dropped so much that there was no water left to cool them. The next evening, at nine minutes past two, the country was producing 4,883 megawatts with a consumption of over 6,700. The rest was bought from the Bulgarians and the Serbs. From the coal that Romania committed to closing through the PNRR: 783 megawatts,” he adds.
What should Romania do to ensure its energy security, especially in the context of the current crisis? What would be the main points of discussion and lobbying that Romania should take to Brussels?
First, let me be clear where I am talking from, so that it does not seem like I am dividing tasks. I left the Ministry of Energy on June 22, 2025. I don’t sign anything anymore, I don’t negotiate anything, I don’t go to any Council of Ministers anymore. I am a deputy. I have only one lever left, a legislative one, and I get to it with YOUR question about Hidroelectrica. Why in Brussels? Because the deadline for closing coal-fi red groups cannot be “changed” only in Bucharest. Through the PNRR, the country committed to decommissioning 4,920 megawatts of coal by 2032, and behind that commitment are already collected European money. Whoever wants to change the calendar goes to the Commission with documents or doesn’t change it at all. While I was minister, I went to the Energy Council several times. There, you don’t negotiate with moral arguments. I saw delegates who came with the story and left with nothing. Romania signed that calendar without putting on the table the calculation that shows what is left after.
What needs to be taken to Brussels now is a rule, not an exception. No capacity is closed before its replacement actually produces. Not designed, not contracted, not inaugurated. To produce. Written in the commitment with the Commission, so that it no longer depends on who the minister is.
A study that holds up still needs to be done. ACER, the European regulator of the energy market, has validated Romania’s adequacy study, from what I know.
The calendar also needs to be taken. Poland negotiated its mining until 2049, linked to the start-up of its first nuclear reactor, in 2033. Germany has 2038, with review clauses. Bulgaria has 2038. I publicly support 2049 for our coal capacities and I would like someone to explain to me how this difference was reached.
In your view, what is the most suitable energy mix for Romania for the next period and how could we ensure it?
The base remains nuclear. The 1,413 megawatts at Cernavodă were the only band in the country independent of the weather, and this month showed us that they still depend on the fl ow of the Danube. Units 3 and 4 exist and are moving forward, EPCM contract signed during my mandate, after decades of stagnation, and each year of delay is paid for with imports. Hydro is the second discussion and it is more complicated than it seems. There are 6,688 megawatts installed and about 5,000, more precisely 5,061, on which the system can rely. The diff erence was lost through wear and tear and is being recovered through retrofi tting. We are in the worst situation with gas. The auction for the 850 megawatt power plant at Ișalnița, which was supposed to replace coal-fi red units this very year, was canceled twice. The second time, no one showed up, for a contract increased from 492 to 739 million euros, with the deadline moved from 2026 to 2029. When no one shows up for a 739 million auction, we receive a verdict on how we estimate the investments, but also that a cleanup of the bureaucratic legislation on public procurement is required. Everything else depends on storage. Transelectrica is asking for between 2,000 and 4,000 megawatts. Hidroelectrica approved a plan of up to 1,500 in July. It’s the only chapter where we’re moving quickly and we’re still halfway there.
What would be the main negotiating points for ETS, SAF and CBAM?
To build a wind turbine in Romania, you bring steel from Turkey or China. A 100 megawatt park means between ten and twelve thousand tons. From January 1, 2026, that steel pays a carbon tax upon entering the Union. Basically, we pay carbon to install carbon-free capacity. Hence the fi rst request: a transition mechanism for equipment intended for renewables. For the extended carbon scheme on heating and fuels, ETS2, one year was obtained, the start was moved from 2027 to 2028. Romania signed the request for re-analysis on July 14, together with nine other states. What it still needs to achieve is for the price cap to function permanently, not just in the fi rst two years. For sustainable aviation fuel, the obligation is 2% from 2025 and rises to 6% in 2030. The Commission refused any relaxation in April. Romania does not produce a single liter today, and the fi rst installation, at Petrobrazi, starts up in mid-2028. We have been paying for three years to import something that could have been made here, if someone had looked at the calendar fi ve years ago.
How can we ensure the fairest possible prices for energy and gas for consumers and for industry? What do we need to do to support the industry?
On August 8, at noon, energy in Romania cost zero lei. At one point it went into the red, meaning producers were paying to get rid of it, because there was too much sun and too little storage. On the same day, at nine in the evening, 1,032 lei per megawatt-hour. No one entered or left the market in the meantime. The sun set.
So the first price measure is a construction measure.
The state must guarantee a predictable income to those who invest in the grid and storage, through contracts for difference. The French from EDF have clearly said that they will only move forward with Tarnița if such a scheme exists. Without it, the grid will not be built, and the evening price will still be set by the Bulgarians and Serbs.
The groups that remain in the system for safety must be paid for this, according to rules written in advance. During my mandate, I kept them open through specific negotiations in Brussels.
For industry, there are two things to do. Large aluminum, steel and fertilizer factories also pay the indirect cost of carbon certificates in the price. The Germans and French have been compensating for it for years, even from the money collected from the sale of certificates. Our scheme is limited. And Alro or Azomureș should be able to sign a ten-year contract with Hidroelectrica, at a predictable price. Legally, it is possible. It was not wanted.
For the person who pays the bill at home, the answer is less pleasant: there is no cap that would replace megawatts. You can move the cost from the bill to the budget, that is, still on it, or you can build.
Why are important energy projects like those of Hidroelectrica and CE Oltenia delayed so long and what can be done, in your opinion?
Here I get to the lever I was talking about, the only place where I can do something.
Work on Răstolița began in February 1989. The dam is almost 100% complete. The contractor is insolvent, the designer is bankrupt, and in another instance it has definitively decided that thirty of the 37.5 hectares of forest needed to complete it cannot be cut down.
Surduc-Siriu was approved by decree in 1981 and is at 85%. Livezeni-Bumbești, 87%. Pașcani, 80%. Seven developments, four of them over 80%. None of them are delivering anything yet.
To build a hydroelectric power plant in Romania, you need over two hundred permits and authorizations. I counted them at the Ministry and took them to the CSAT on April 30, 2025, with the situation of the ten construction sites that have been waiting for thirty-ve years. For two years, we tried administratively, with meetings and with fair pressure on institutions. We restarted Tarnița, which had been idle since 2013, and we did not close any production group. None of the seven hydroelectric power plants is fi nished even today. An environmental permit takes years to obtain, unfortunately. That is why, when I was in the Government, I wrote a law. The law declares these hydroelectric power plants national security projects, the basis by which you can request exemptions from the protected areas regime. I initially submitted it as a bill as Minister of Energy, then in Parliament as a deputy in December 2025. It passed the Chamber of Deputies on May 11 and has been in the Senate for three months, in emergency procedure. That’s all I can do as a deputy: write it, submit it and publicly ask for it to be voted on, along with over 75,000 people who signed the petition on the burduja.ro website. At the Oltenia Energy Complex, the carbon certifi cate cost around fi ve euros per ton in 2017. On August 6, it cost 85. At this price, the complex has no way of making a profi t, no matter who runs it. Last year, it lost 1.112 billion lei, almost entirely from provisions. The only solution is to adjust the CO2 certifi cates at the EU level. They artifi cially infl ate the electricity and thermal energy tariff by up to 100%, sometimes even more. And there’s something else in Oltenia. The four photovoltaic parks built with OMV Petrom, in Rovinari, Tismana and Ișalnița, were supposed to produce from 2024. In 2025, they had zero income and a 27 million lei loss, because they were not ready. The deadline was moved to the end of this year. And the coal-fi red groups next to them, the ones we committed to closing, produced 783 megawatts the night Cernavoda was shut down.
How do you see the privatization of important stakes in state-owned companies through the accelerated book building (ABB) method?
In April, the Government put on paper the idea quickly selling on the stock exchange, through accelerated placement, between fi ve and ten percent of Hidroelectrica and another fi ve to seven percent of Romgaz.
The method is used everywhere. The question is what do you do with the money. Ten percent of Hidroelectrica means ten percent of its dividend, year after year, indefinitely. You exchange it for a single receipt. If that receipt goes into current expenses in December, you have sold a piece of a company to pay a bill.
The money from any sale of shares in energy companies must go into a fund from which production capacities are built.
How do you see the problem of Bucharest’s thermal power being solved?
In an apartment in Berceni, someone turns on the hot water tap. That heat left an ELCEN plant and traveled through buried pipes forty years ago. Of all that left, 37.73% never reached the tap. It went into the ground. Approximately 400 million lei per year. In 2024, the network had 5,626 breakdowns, meaning it is in permanent breakdown.
Production is actually being worked on. ELCEN is building new plants with approximately 656 million euros from the Modernization Fund, funds obtained with difficulty by my team, contracts signed, tenders underway, in an advanced stage.
The network is another story, and it is the ugly one. The capital has 3,917 kilometers of pipelines, 250 of which have been modernized. The large European project, worth 1.76 billion lei, reaches 106 kilometers and at the June inspection, 56 were ready. At the current pace, the child born today in Berceni will shower on his grandfather’s pipeline.
I demand the same thing as for hydroelectric power plants, for the same reason: without a special legal status, nothing moves through approvals. Law for the district heating of the Capital, a ten-year program with guaranteed financing and deadlines that also bind the institutions that give the approvals, not just Termoenergetica.
What are the main issues on the public agenda that we need to keep in mind?
The Republic of Moldova covers over 60% of its consumption from imports, most of them from us, and in the first half of this year exports to Chisinau increased by 118%. If we don’t supply the right bank of the Prut, someone else will, and we all know who, and we know what they’re asking for in return.
To the west and south, the logic is commercial. Up Water does not depend on us. We close the coal, we negotiate the contracts with our neighbors. We will lose these two if we do not change our perspective of doing politics for Romania and for Romanians, not for someone else.
to 1,000 megawatts can be exchanged with Serbia through Reșița-Pancevo, and the market that we don’t take doesn’t remain free. There’s another word inherited from the nineties: insularization. In the past, it meant breaking away from your neighbors and managing on your own. Now it means that, if the European grid goes down, the Romanian system fragments in a controlled manner into islands that remain in operation and keep what can’t be stopped under voltage, hospitals rst and foremost. And if everything still goes down, you need a black start, the ability to restart from a dead grid. Either you’ve tested it, or you fi nd out the night you need it. There’s something else that doesn’t enter the public discussion. A blackout can also come from a man with a laptop, from two thousand kilometers away. Dispatching, protections, remote control, all are software. I left the fi le of a cyber incident response center dedicated to energy open for public debate when I left offi ce. I would like to fi out from those who are now where it ended up. I took care to re-initiate it as a deputy, to be sure that it would be adopted someday. Or at least that we are trying. We got through August with coal, with what was still in the lakes and with imports. Water does not depend on us. We close the coal, we negotiate the contracts with our neighbors. We will lose these two if we do not change our perspective of doing politics for Romania and for Romanians, not for someone else.
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The interview also appeared in the print edition of Energynomics Magazine, Q3 2026 issue.
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