The National Energy Strategy will be put up for public debate in two weeks, to be approved by Government Decision by the end of June, announced the Minister of Energy, Sebastian Burduja.

“Energy means economic competitiveness, it also means the quality of life for Romanians, it means almost everything – and it is a strategic ministry. When I took over the mandate, 10 months ago, I made a recapitulation of the main situations-challenges, from the strategic plan to the investment plan and the implementation of these projects. On the strategic level, Romania has not had an energy strategy for many years, they have always been blocked in court, in interministerial approval, but we certainly have the National Integrated Climate Change Plan. (PNIESC). And that in itself was a debate. Is there still a need for a national strategy, as the European Commission demands? My conclusion was that yes, we need a National Energy Strategy, and the integrated plan to be correlated with this energy strategy – and we created, shortly after taking over the mandate, a tool for the first time called the Honorary Council,” said Burduja, according to Agerpres.

According to him, the energy strategy in its current form was generated in the Ministry of Energy, passed through the opinions of the specialists of the Honorary Council and is to be put into public debate and enter interministerial approval within “probably two weeks”.

“In two weeks, expect to be able to debate this National Energy Strategy in an even broader format and, by mid-June, at the latest at the end of June, to see it adopted. It is adopted by Government Decision “, he added.

Regarding the National Energy Strategy, Burduja specified that the options were: to proceed “as before, with an exhaustive document, with a list of projects, which involved environmental approval and all the procedures that previously delayed or blocked things ” or to adopt a concept type strategy “that’s where the world is going, that’s where we want the country to go”.

“We went with the second option, because the approvals themselves are much easier and because at the end of June we must also have a final consolidated form of the new PNIESC, and the logical order also established in the European regulations is to first have a strategy, after which to come up with the National Integrated Climate Change Plan. (…), the minister also said.