The influx of European funds exceeding 4 billion euros intended to finance energy production projects from renewable sources, also contributes to the emergence of many consulting firms that do not have the necessary expertise, warns Roxana Mircea, Managing Partner at REI Grup.
“With this year’s grants, a lot of consulting firms have appeared overnight that call clients, take some payments in advance and then they don’t even submit the projects. It is very important to vet our partners. You cannot implement a 50 million euro project with some juniors. It is important not only how we write the projects for European funds, but also how we implement them”, Mircea explained, at the conference “More renewables for Romania”, organized by Energynomics.
One of the difficulties of attracting non-reimbursable funds occurs when the beneficiaries need a reduced co-financing and postpone the start of the project until it is approved by the authorities. According to Mircea, in the case of these projects, it is preferable that the beneficiaries do not waste time and proceed directly to the construction of the energy production facilities, due to the long period of approval of the projects by the ministries involved in the management of European funds.
“For small projects and small grants it makes no sense to wait any longer. For large projects where we are talking about grants from one million euros upwards, there is another discussion. And we advise the factories to be very careful and not to build projects just for the sake of projects”, added Mircea.
According to Mircea, this year REI will run 500-1,000 projects to attract funds for renewable energy, compared to a level of 200-300 in 2022.
The conference “More renewables for Romania” was organized by Energynomics with the support of our partners among which ABB, ACE Industrial Software, BCR, Consolight, Eaton Electric, Elektra Renewable Support, EnergoPower, European Energy, Finder, Geminox, Huawei, ING Bank, LAPP Romania, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Phoenix Contact, Photomate, Prime Batteries Technology, REI Grup, Renomia-Gallagher, Valmont, Volt, Wiren România, Wise Finance Solutions.