The ordinance is intended to modify the current support scheme for renewable energy investors. Wind power investors should get only one green certificate instead of the current two and get the rest of certificates as of 2018.
The change should come into force this July and will affect investors in wind farms, solar PV projects and hydropower plants. It has been previously mentioned by Zoltan Nagy-Bege, member in the Regulatory Committee of Romania’s energy market regulator ANRE.
A previous proposed change to the support scheme was to cut the number of green certificates allocated for each technology along with the maximum price set by the law from EUR55 to EUR30.
“If we carefully look at the facts (…) we can see we’ll have certificate costs increase as of 2016. The price may be lower by that time, but we can already see that the price of green certificates is going down. We may end up in the same place. Anyway, I hope they’ll have a public debate,” Economy Ministry sources say.
ANRE will have a meeting on Friday to analyze the monitoring report of the renewable energy project market in 2012 and decide whether green technologies eligible for the current scheme are overcompensated or not.
The latest emergency ordinance draft says these steps are taken in order “to contain the uncontrolled rise in prices for end electricity consumers” and “to maintain competitiveness of the main energy intensive sectors of the economy.”
Romania has so far attracted more than EUR3 billion investments in clean energy projects, with over 2,100 MW installed in wind farms alone.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)