This along with a new reactor at the Cernavoda nuclear power plant and the natural gas-fired power plant of OMV Petrom are the most remarkable changes in the energy sector in the past decade.
Behemoths like Termoelectrica and RAAN left the scene by going bankrupt, while continued operation of entities like Complexul Energetic Hunedoara, the only company still generating power from coal in Romania, is uncertain. At the moment, green power accounts for 40% of the electricity the country is using, which includes the major hydropower plants of Hidroelectrica.
In 2006, coal-fired plants accounted for 42% of Romania’s energy production, while the Cernavoda power plant, which had only one reactor operational, accounted for 9%. At the time there was no wind farm in place.
The data in the reports of the energy market watchdog ANRE show power generation sector included companies like Termoeletrica and Electrocentrale Deva in 2006.
Changes in the contribution of energy generation sources to the total energy production were already obvious in 2010, when the second reactor of the Cernavoda plant was operational. That plant accounted for 19% of the country’s electricity production in 2010 compared with 9% in 2006. The cheaper power coming from the Cernavoda plant dealt a heavy blow to thermoelectric power plants. The year 2010 was also when the green power investment boom started, which was to radically change the local energy sector.
Clean energy was probably one of the most significant changes of the local energy sector, attracting more than EUR6 billion investments because of a very generous support scheme. Romania went from practically no turbine to about 1,500 and hectares of photovoltaic parks.
Wind farms, solar parks and biomass power plants generated 12.5% of the electricity Romania used in 2015, the highest green power percentage in the country ever.
As a result, companies like Termoelectrica are no longer in business, while entities like Complexul Energetic Hunedoara are being slowly but steadily driven out of the market, since power generation companies compete by price.
Another element that sealed the fate of the coal-fired power plants in Romania was the completion of an 860 MW natural-gas fired plant in Brazi by Petrom, the only oil and natural gas producer in the country, following a EUR530 million investment in 2012. Petrom’s power plant contributed 5.74% of the electricity generated in Romania last year, which made it the fourth largest power producer in the country.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)