Municipalities in the counties of Romania’s north-eastern region have a total of €650 million available for energy efficiency and urban mobility objectives, said Vasile Asandei, director-general of the North-East Regional Development Agency (ADR), at the conference “Energy Efficiency for Energy Transition” organized in Iași by Energynomics together with the Romanian Energy Efficiency Fund – FREE and the Directorate for Energy Efficiency within the Ministry of Energy.

“Municipalities have pre-allocated money for energy efficiency, they just have to present a strategy after which they can submit concrete projects. For energy efficiency in public and residential buildings, as well as for urban mobility, a total of €650 million is available,” said Asandei.

ADR North-East covers the counties of Bacau, Botoșani, Iași, Neamț, Suceava and Vaslui. Asandei added that the agency will continue to fund projects similar to those of the previous financial year, but European Union regulations have imposed a number of limitations.

For example, for green energy projects there must be a minimum limit of 30% of the allocated funds, and for the ADR North-East this percentage is 38%. Full details of the ADR North-East funding programmes are available at https://regionordest.ro/.

“We have a double challenge. Namely, to provide the energy we need, but to do it in such a way that we don’t compromise the environment we live in,” he added.

The conference in Iași was the fourth of a series of 5 scheduled by the Energynomics communication platform, the Romanian Fund for Energy Efficiency – FREE and the Directorate for Energy Efficiency within the Ministry of Energy. The project is financed by Norwegian Grants 2014-2021. The final conference is scheduled on November 16 and 17, in Bucharest.