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The Romanian Parliament is preparing a new bill to greenlight the long-term energy bilateral contracts for holders of renewable energy projects with total installed capacity of less than 5 MW, market sources told energynomics.ro. Energy suppliers, through AFEER, requested for permission to ink direct bilateral contracts for renewable capacity of up to 10 MW.
“There are nearly 600 renewable projects of small capacities currently stuck. Most financing were blocked in the absence of long-term firm contracts, and in the absence of the support scheme”, sources said.
Waiting for a regulated tariff subsidy system (feed-in tariff), most recently funded projects in the field of hydropower were virtually blocked and the only projects that received money from banks consisted of restructuring investment, industry officials said.
One of the major impediments in securing financing is the lack of predictability of revenues, given the impossibility of signing bilateral energy contracts in the long term. The bilateral contracts were banned to prevent fraud such as the ones at Hidroelectrica, where the energy was sold at low prices on long-term contracts to intermediaries.
Last week, Zoltan Nagy, a member in the Regulatory Board at ANRE, said that the regulatory body has filed all necessary documentation for the launching of the green energy subsidy system through regulated tariffs, but the European Commission delays a decision in this regard.
Iulian Iancu, President of Industries Commission, Chamber of Deputies, recently said that feed-in tariff will be introduced in March. He also argued that Parliament will seek support for expansion of feed-in for units with maximum 5 MW installed capacity.
Under the ANRE proposals, producers of electricity from renewable sources that have an installed power of up to 500 KW – 2 MW will receive subsidies in the form of regulated tariffs at which electricity contracts are guaranteed by the system and with a price ranging between 69.4 lei and 167 euro per MWh.
