Romania needs much better planning in the energy sector, with fewer pages written in the National Strategy and more actions, said, on Thursday, in a conference, Dana Dărăban, executive director of the Federation of Associations of Utility Companies from Energy (ACUE).

“Romania has a very big problem… accessing these funds granted for innovation. If we have this potential, these brains in the country, we should somehow, by accessing these funds, make them available to business, the business area. It is not a big deal to implement some models of collaboration between the business environment and the area of innovation and scientific research. I think Romania needs much better planning, fewer pages written in the Energy Strategy, more actions with managers, with institutions which should be a little more flexible and faster in movement, because we, unfortunately, are still walking around with papers, even though we are talking about digitalization,” Dărăban said, according to Agerpres.

The head of ACUE mentioned that, although investments of 22.6 billion euros are announced in the draft Energy Strategy of Romania 2021 – 2030, “I don’t know if anyone is monitoring where we are and what we still have to do.”

“The dissatisfaction of the public should be very realistically attributed to the lack of planning that we, in the energy supply and distribution industry, have invoked many times. Indeed, Romania must have a very clear way: how much do we want photovoltaics, what is a cost/benefit for each alternative that the customer may have available in the future as a source of energy? The state has this obligation to make these calculations and leave the customer the opportunity to decide what is more favorable and must facilitate access to this infrastructure. All these projects in the production area, in the prosumer area, in the photovoltaic area, must also be correlated with the realities, that we approve many projects for nothing. The European Commission estimates that there is a need of approximately 584 billion euros in the European transmission-distribution network, until 2030. I trust that this is a figure that has been analyzed. In the Strategy published by the Ministry of Energy, in the draft 2021 – 2030, it is mentioned 22.6 billion euro investments needed in the energy sector, production, transport, distribution of electricity. I don’t know if anyone monitors where we are and what we still have to do to be sure that these amounts are found in what we make available in the various energy sectors so that we can reach these assumed targets,” stated Dana Dărăban.