Romania risks failing to reach its quota assumed for renewable energy production for the year 2020 as energy consumption rises on a background of renewables parks collapse, told energynomics.ro investors in the industry.
National Statistics Institute (INS) reported yesterday a final electricity consumption for the first eight months of this year of 36.51 billion KWh, up 4.3% compared to the same period of 2015, with the highest increase, of 5.3%, recorded in the industrial sector. Household consumption rose 1.1%, while public lighting decreased by 1.3%.
“Even if the INS data on energy consumption are not the same as those of Transelectrica, both reflect higher consumption of more than 3% for this year. In the context of a consumption exceeding 2% annually in conjunction with the situation of wind and solar industry collapse, Romania will not be able to achieve the targets assumed for 2020 in terms of renewables”, added the source.
According to INS, while production from thermal power plants decreased by 5.4% and the nuclear power plant in Cernavoda, by 4%, hydropower production was up 15.5%, while the wind and the photovoltaic production has decreased by 11.5% and, respectively, 5.5%.
New investments in industrial parks, office buildings and shopping centers rose substantially during the past year, and investors worry that Romania could not handle a potential increase in energy consumption of 1.5-2% per annum in the next decade. But authorities say there will be no network failures.
The energy strategy provides in one of the scenarios a growth in consumption of up to 1.5-2% annually, previously said Corina Popescu, State Secretary in the Ministry of Energy.
“In one of the scenarios (in the new quantitative analysis) consumption is expected to increase by up to 2%. It is clear that we will have renewable, nuclear, hydro, coal and hydrocarbons, but we do not know to what extent,” Corina Popescu told energynomics.ro.
“It is clear that we will need to ensure the energy balance. Certainly in the final document of the strategy will see in which ratio,” said Popescu.
“We are not scared that consumption will rise,” also said Iulian Iancu, chairman of the Industry and Services Committee of the Chamber of Deputies.
“Three decades from now on there will be no gap in energy feed. The problem is how can we ensure the operational balancing. You can not change the energy mix in just a decade,” said Iancu.
In developed countries such as Denmark, Germany or the US, the balancing of the system takes place simultaneously.
“They managed to do a balancing every minute. Tehcnically it can be done, but requires efforts,” added Iancu.
