Bolojan officially announces the measures against “speculative” projects in the field he wanted “dewormed”
The National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE) adopted two regulations on Thursday that will unlock the access of power producers to the electricity grids, interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said on Thursday evening.
The two provisions, according to the prime minister, refer to the increase of the guarantee for connection from 5% to 20% of the tariff, respectively to the introduction of a guarantee of 30 euros/kW, related to the installed power, for obtaining the establishment authorization.
“Companies that will complete their project will get their guarantees back, and those that will not invest will lose money and free up access for others. So far, because there were no guarantees and firm deadlines, many speculative projects have been authorized, over the capacity of the networks, practically blocking access or greatly increasing the cost of connection,” said Ilie Bolojan, Thursday evening, in a post on Facebook.
He thanked the ANRE management for amending the regulation.
Ilie Bolojan said that “it is one of the three basic directions that we must follow in order to lower the price of energy in our country”.
The three directions mentioned by the prime minister are “unlocking access to electricity networks by abolishing speculative ATRs” and “supporting battery storage or pumped storage systems that can store surplus electricity during the day and make it available in the evening”, as well as “urgent completion of investments to increase energy production and network capacity”.
Ilie Bolojan said that the domain must be “dewormed”
In a press conference on April 8, Bolojan drew attention to the fact that “under 10%” of the projects for which technical approvals for connection (ATR) were issued have actually advanced, while the remaining 90% “are of a speculative nature”.
According to the prime minister, until this spring, ATRs were issued for projects of 80,000 megawatts, although the Romanian economy needs a daily power of only about 9,000 megawatts.
“We will be able to allow serious investors, who are on the Romanian market, who want to access financing made available by the Ministry of Energy and the Government or who have their own bank financing, to be able to make these investments, but for that, then, we need to deworm our networks from these technical connection approvals,” declared Ilie Bolojan.
HotNews revealed in 2024 that one of the most famous deals done in this way was that of Mihai Cristian Ciolacu, the grandson of former prime minister and PSD leader Marcel Ciolacu.
