“Romania is the only country which made the mistake of giving EUR160 for the production of one megawatt of wind power. Also, all thermal power units are shut down to allow wind energy to enter the grid,” Nica said.
Prime Minister Victor Ponta said in May, after the European Council summit, Romania would rethink its renewable energy support scheme so costs would not burden household and industrial consumers.
Energy Minister Constantin Nita said last week the government might adopt this week a bill reducing state support for renewable energy producers.
The draft bill stipulates, among others, a temporary cutback in the number of green certificates granted to renewable energy producers, and regulates trading of green certificates on the local energy exchange OPCOM.
“The bill brings several improvements to the initial law. The only clause that bothers investors refers to the fact that the certificates will be collected by the energy watchdog ANRE, which will establish a secondary legal framework on how they should be used,” Nita said.
Romanian producers of renewable energy benefit from government support via a green certificates scheme, which allows them to recover part of the production costs. Each renewable energy producer is granted a number of green certificates for power fed into the electricity grid.
The subsidies, which are eventually passed onto consumers’ electricity bills, are not available for producers of conventional energy.
The government recently announced that it would temporarily reduce the number of green certificates in the scheme to prevent a sharp rise in electricity prices. The measure will be applied between July 2013 and December 2016.