Romania does not have a database of vulnerable energy consumers that really need to be subsidized, so the public money that should help these people is not properly managed, said Dana Dărăban, the executive director of Federation of Associations of Energy Utility Companies (ACUE), during the “Data science in energy” debate.

“We still don’t have a database so we can know who earns, how much they earn and, in the conditions in which we have to intervene, to intervene in a targeted way, to make sure that we help those who really need it. We have all these resources, we win competitions, we have a lot of openness, we also have parliamentarians who want to make such policies and yet we continue to apply a scheme that does not help those who need it. It is a scheme from public money, and public money it is not being managed at the moment as it should be,” she said, according to Agerpres.

This is despite the fact that Romania is considered to have a leading place in the IT area.

“We have the best IT specialists, we want Cluj to be a software center, moreover, we have facilities for the IT industry and yet we cannot use these advantages. It is very frustrating,” Dărăban added.

According to her, the authorities should set up such a database before the next cold season.

“The vulnerable energy consumer is a category to which the state has many possibilities of intervention, we are talking about European funds that are allocated especially for these consumers. If we cannot define them, we will not be able to allocate funds and we will use the budgetary resource. It is a limit to the extent to which the state budget can cover these expenses,” said the ACUE representative.

The chairman of the Committee on Industries and Services in the Chamber of Deputies, Sandor Bende, together with the deputy Oana Ozmen and Think Tank 360, organized, on Wednesday, the national premiere for the energy sector, the debate “Data Science in Energy”.