About 11,611 Romanians are not connected to the electricity grid in 2024, according to the Intelligent Energy Association. This is also due to the fact that most adults are between 50 and 96 years old, the average being at the limit of life expectancy in Romania. Worryingly, a number of 4,777 children live in these houses without electricity.
About 87% of houses inhabited without electricity do not have a cadastre, which makes it difficult to take an institutional approach to solving this problem. Given that 64% of people living in houses without electricity have incomes estimated below the minimum income per person and household in Romania, even connecting them to a distribution network would later make it difficult to pay for the electricity consumed. Thus, the construction of photovoltaic electricity production facilities solves the short-term and long-term problem of houses without electricity.
The National Register of Houses Without Electricity (RNCFEE) shows that only 25% of houses without electricity are more than 2 km from the grid as the crow flies.
Worrying is the lack of interest in this serious problem, only in 23% of cases plans, strategies, projects, etc. exist or are to be implemented. of household electrification in the next 3 years. A real challenge is the difficulty of access to these houses, in 53% of cases access to buildings without electricity is difficult and in 10% of cases there are no access roads.
The counties where there are the most permanently inhabited houses without electricity are Covasna, Satu Mare, Suceava and Bistrita Năsăud.
Analyzing the way in which the situation of permanently inhabited buildings without electricity evolved, between the years 2017 and 2024, in Alba county (the only county where we had available data), we can estimate the following:
– 45% of buildings without electricity were abandoned/abandoned/destroyed in the last 7 years,
– 74% of people died/left their homes in the last 7 years,
– 16% of non-electrified buildings were electrified in the last 7 years,
– the average age of residents living in non-electrified houses increased from 67 to 74 years, in the last 7 years,
– statistical analysis shows that naturally between 3-10 years all houses without electricity will be abandoned.
The alternative to solving the problem of houses without energy, waiting for people to die, is to carry out the following actions proposed by AEI:
– Social responsibility program: Energy for Life – Adopt a House without Electric Energy by all companies as a result of some fiscal facilities.
– Extending feasible electricity distribution networks – Imposing this obligation on distribution operators in the 5th regulatory period.
– Green House for Extreme Energy Poverty – Program run by the Ministry of the Environment.