The government last week issued an emergency ordinance cutting part of the green certificates granted to producers of renewable energy. The document, which was published in the Romanian Official Journal, no longer includes a clause that would allow large electricity consumers to pay half of the green certificates for the electricity consumed.
The provision was replaced with a vaguer paragraph which states that an unspecified quantity of the electricity delivered to final consumers might be exempted from the current law on renewable energy support, subject to a series of terms.
“The conditions of exemption, as well as the exempted quantity will be approved by government decision and will be subject to separate regulations set by the energy authority ANRE, following authorization from the European Commission,” the government said in its emergency ordinance.
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 certificates are then sold to power companies, which eventually pass the costs onto consumers.