People now engaged in the gas sector, considered a transition fuel to clean energy, will have the same problems as miners 20 years from now, said Martin Moise, first vice president of the Employers’ Organization of Energy Producers in Renewable Sources of Romania (PATRES), in an online meeting with the press.
He criticized the authorities’ strategy of granting massive state aid to keep the Oltenia Energy Complex alive.
“About 250-300 million euro a year are thrown there in high water. If we keep this capacity in operation for the next 10 years, we will spend several billion euros, 2-3-4 billion euros, depending on where the price of the carbon certificate is going, without seeing an additional MW newly installed in the system. Only to keep that capacity in operation,” stated Moise, according to Agerpres.
“How many new MWs could be made with this 4 billion euro? Do we really have no other choice but to throw billions out on the window to keep some polluting and old installations in operation? And in the end, after we have spent this money, to have nothing new?!,” he added.
Moise stated that he agrees with the idea that at this time we cannot imagine an energy system that works only with solar and wind installations.
“But there are other solutions. We look at this whole thing extremely radically, there are two camps: the pro and anti renewable part. But there is no middle ground. We are promoting this area. We did not say that starting tomorrow we must close all power plants and all to be renewables, we have a pragmatic approach. But we believe that Romania’s ambitions are extremely low, our country does not understand the opportunity and we have a reactive, and not proactive reaction to this issue,” Moise said.
He gave as an example the fact that Romania’s strategy is based on gas as a transition fuel, but there is no direction for the period after, when the gas, which is also a pollutant, will reach the situation where coal is now.
“We will invest in thousands of MW of gas power plants, we are preparing to hire people in this area. But in 20 years, they will end up in the situation of those who are in mining today. We should not prepare a whole industry and workforce also to the other side? In the sense of creating businesses that go beyond this 20 years, in which to lay the foundation for a new economic model. I don’t see this happening,” he added.
Moise reminded that the last new energy production capacity was put into operation in 2016 and since then no new MW has been put into use.
“At the moment we are extremely far from other investments. They are not feasible at the moment, there are extremely many obstacles, and Transelectrica said very clearly that at this moment in Dobrogea absolutely nothing can be installed, neither photovoltaic nor wind-based, and the imbalance costs in Romania are the highest in the EU – a wind farm currently pays between 13 and 14 euro for each MWh it produces. In comparison, in Germany, France, Italy, Spain this imbalance cost is of 1-2 euro. There is a huge amount of money being lost here, and no renewable business is standing up because of this artificial cost,” Moise said.