Romania is one of the most attractive countries in terms of the approval time for green energy projects, which is 2-4 years, compared to 7-8 years in the Nordic countries, said Lăcrămioara Diaconu-Pințea, Country Manager at OX2 Romania.
“We hope this will be maintained, but there is a need for synchronization between the competent authorities in this area,” she added.
For banks that finance such projects, market liquidity is an extremely important criterion. If the market is illiquid, banks will automatically require long-term energy sales contracts in order to grant loans. Also, any financier wants to have revenue predictability over as long a period of time as possible, but it is important to “map” all potential constraints related to connection costs, as sometimes reinforcement costs can be so high as to make the project unfeasible.
“That’s why we go for wind and sun, but not necessarily in the best place in Romania. Maybe it is a slightly weaker resource, but which does not have such a high cost of connection to the network and then the business case might, on the whole, be better than in a situation where you go to the best place, but where you have very high connection costs and then there is even the risk of operational limitation (…) because the network is congested, because everyone wanted to be there”, Diaconu-Pințea added.
