The renewable energy market in Romania is underdeveloped and many investments are unviable, said Mirel Jarnea, SEE Business Development Manager at LONGI Solar.
“It is clear that Romania will never have its own production of solar panels and wind turbines or inverters, but we have the capacity to make the structures and I see some Romanian companies that have started to work. We are still in a market where much more GW is being traded at the coffee shops in Dorobanți than we are working on. It’s a market where projects exist on paper but are not financially viable. A friend of mine looked at 40 projects in a month and made an offer for only one”, he said, at the conference “2024: A defining year for the renewable energy sector in Romania”.
However, there are already gigawatt projects built or under construction.
From Jarnea’s point of view, prices are quite low, equipment transport time is stable, equipment production is sufficient.
The biggest problem in the market at the moment is not the prices, but the poor quality of the equipment with which some of these projects are built. One of the reasons for this is also the extremely short lead time for projects under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan – NRRP.
“The NRRP is very vulnerable because all the projects have to be done in a very short time and we will see very poor quality equipment. Through the NRRP the tenders were badly done and it’s a pity because we will have poor quality equipment coming into the country. The poor quality of the equipment will be seen in 15-20 years,” he added.
On the other hand, the market lacks Romanian EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) companies, which makes more and more foreign companies gain market share. Things will get worse as Chinese companies enter the market.
“A few years ago I was telling Romanian EPCs to work together and put their egos aside so they could bid for medium and large projects, but they didn’t listen. That’s why a lot of foreign companies come and take contracts in Romania. At least keep the workforce in the country. Foreign EPCs do not do anything else apart from project finance management, because they still work with Romanian people. As more and more projects come up, we won’t have anyone to do them with. We will have to repatriate a lot of people who are now working abroad,” Jarnea said.
In his view, 20-30,000 people would be needed to work in this sector, and the authorities would also need to help attract them.
The conference “2024: A defining year for the renewable energy sector in Romania” was organized by Energynomics with the support of our partners: ADC, Alive Capital, CRC Energy, Elektra Renewable Support, EnergoPower, Ensys, Extro, Horváth, ING Bank, LONGi Solar, Monsson Operation, Nofar Energy, OX2 România, Photomate, PNE Romania, Polytrade Global, REI Grup, Renomia, Sph3ra Management Solutions, Transelectrica, WALDEVAR Energy, Wiren Romania. On this occasion, Energynomics launched its first report under the initiative “Monitor of the Romanian Photovoltaic Projects”.