Iași City Hall intends to attract European funding for the transition of an old coal-fired power plant to a new gas-fired one, an investment of around 120 million euros. “We cannot afford to give up the use of gas. We have to make that gas plant at CET 2 and we will have to close CET 1”, said Mihai Chirica, the Mayor of Iași, at the conference “Energy Efficiency for Energy Transition” organized in Iași by Energynomics together with the Romanian Energy Efficiency Fund – FREE and the Directorate for Energy Efficiency within the Ministry of Energy.
CET Iași 2 is located in the commune of Holboca, eight kilometers from the city and 11 kilometers from CET Iași 1 and is equipped with two steam boilers and two 50 MW lignite-fired turbo-aggregates. The plant was commissioned in 1986 and completed in 1987. In October 1988, the connecting heating pipeline between the two CHPs was also built.
According to Chirica, the municipality is interested in the environmental objectives dictated by Brussels because it is “constrained by EU policies to transform Europe into a green continent”. The mayor added that “there are opportunities”.
“Energy efficiency and transition should also be complemented with energy independence. Each locality should be obliged to develop a photovoltaic plant for public consumption. We still need to develop the industrial infrastructure to be able to support the energy efficiency programs”, added Chirica.
On the other hand, the mandatory thermal insulation of public buildings in Romania, as well as the absence of local producers of the necessary materials, make the country “completely unprepared” for these objectives.
“Today in Romania, we have only one mineral wool factory for the thermal insulation of buildings, and all energy efficiency programs require the use of this product in addition to polystyrene. So we are a net importer for all the products we use for energy efficiency. We do not have a factory for steel window profiles; we do not produce equipment except very shyly. We are completely unprepared to enter the market in energy efficiency programs, compared to Poland, for example,” the mayor said.
The conference in Iași was the fourth of a series of 5 scheduled by the Energynomics communication platform, the Romanian Fund for Energy Efficiency – FREE and the Directorate for Energy Efficiency within the Ministry of Energy. The project is financed by Norwegian Grants 2014-2021. The final conference is scheduled on November 16 and 17, in Bucharest.