Investments in increasing storage capacities are critical because, otherwise, no matter how many investments are made, the system will still have problems, but we must also be prepared for serious investments in potential cyber attacks, said Daniela Dărăban, executive director of the ACUE Federation, on Tuesday, at a conference.

“In line with what Romania assumes through the net zero 2050 objectives, investments in renewable sources must increase significantly. Investments in the modernization of networks must increase. (…) Investments in increasing storage capacities are critical because, otherwise, no matter how many investments you make, the system will still have problems,” said Daniela Dărăban, according to Agerpres.

At the same time, she mentioned that “we must also be prepared for serious investments in potential cyber attacks”.

The executive director of the ACUE Federation specified that there is a need for very flexible intervention tools regarding the protection of the household customer and the industrial customer, in moments of crisis, which can be “a price crisis”.

“Energy independence is certainly the ability of a country to ensure its needs, its demand from its own sources. But, energy independence is complemented by the concept of energy security, a concept of energy security that includes, in addition to the ability to ensure your demand from our own production, access to a modern and secure infrastructure, to be prepared to face potential physical or cyber attacks. This is energy security, after which we are moving forward, towards a concept that is quite popular now – and I think it is necessary by virtue of the crisis we went through – the possibility that both the economy and the customers can afford the price of energy. And here I will give you just a few figures that I saw recently, published by the International Energy Agency,” pointed out Daniela Dărăban.

She mentioned that 900 billion dollars were allocated by the governments of the world during the crisis, in addition to the support measures that already existed.

“It seems that only for 2023 there are 300 billion dollars allocated. If we look at what is available – investments for renewable energy, clean energy, globally, we see 1.34 trillion dollars, so somehow the investments they are certainly the key. And we will have to see that at the level of Romania as well,” said Dărăban.