The Senate Plenary adopted, on Wednesday, a project initiated by the Government, an Emergency Ordinance (EOG) aimed at simplifying the approval of some investment objectives for the completion of hydropower developments in progress, as well as other projects of major public interest that use green energy.
“At the end of last year, the Government came up with an extremely important GEO, I would even say strategic for Romania, through which it practically scored 11 essential projects for Romania, many of which are hydropower-based, and introduced this list in the GEO in order to obtain money from the RePower EU Program, which was launched by the European Commission in the context of the energy crisis. Practically, through this GEO we want and the Government wants to simplify the approval of these projects, and by its entry into force we hope that we can speed up the completion of these extremely important construction sites for Romania,” said Antal Lorant, president of the Energy Commission in the Senate, according to Agerpres.
According to the GEO, works on these projects must be completed by 2026, but this depends on the speed with which the environmental permits are obtained to complete the works started, the senator explained.
“According to the GEO, there is a nominated deadline until 2026, when these works must be completed. It is clear that it also depends a lot on the administration, in the sense that there is already an interministerial commission, in this case the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of the Environment, MIPE and of course Hidroelectrica and the strategic state companies in the field of energy, which work together in this commission, to expedite approvals and for the companies to be able to finish the started works as quickly as possible,” emphasized Antal Lorant.
According to the joint admission report prepared by the specialized commissions, the purpose of the draft law is “to exempt the investment objectives provided, declared projects of major public interest, respectively projects of national interest/importance/national security, from the application of the provisions of Law no. 292/2018, respectively from the application of the provisions of Law no. 18/1991, as well as from the application of the provisions of art. 35 of Law no. 46/2008, according to which the area of the national forest fund is prohibited. At the same time, the normative act modifies and completes the Government’s Emergency Ordinance 108/2022 regarding the decarbonization of the energy sector.”
“Considering the strategic character of the investment projects for the realization of hydropower developments and the fact that the European financing through the REPower EU plan of measures requires a short period of time for evaluation, it is necessary to ensure the possibility of their realization until the year 2026 by completing and putting into value of the hydropower projects from the Annex to the normative act, respectively: Hydropower development of the Jiu river on the Livezeni – Bumbeşti sector, Hydropower development of the Olt gorge river on the Cornetu – Avrig sector, Pașcani hydropower development on the Siret river, Răstolniţa hydropower development, Surduc Siriu hydropower development, the hydropower development of the Siret river on the Cosmeşti – Movileni sector and Cerna Motru Tismana hydrotechnical and energy complex, Stage II of the AHE of the Olt river on the Izbiceni – Danube sector Islaz hydroelectric plant, Cerna Belareca hydropower development, Capitalizing on the solar energy potential in the area of Sadova – Dăbuleni, Dolj – UAT Sadova, Development of CTE Iernut through construction of a new gas turbine combined cycle thermoelectric plant with an installed capacity of 430 MW. Also, this way, almost 2 TWh/year of renewable green energy is added to the annual Romanian production, which leads to the achievement of the current desired energy independence under the conditions of respecting and protecting the environment,” the report also says.