Renewable energy producers could close down due to the overtax introduced by Law 259/2021 on capping and offsetting energy bills, said on Wednesday Martin Moise, First Vice President of the Romanian Association of Renewable Energy Producers (PATRES).

“In the middle of the Green Deal, in the midst of the transition to green, the authorities have decided to impose an additional tax on energy producers. I admit that we had to take action, because otherwise we would have seen people on the street with pitchforks and axes, but let’s take a step back to see what the problem is, namely that there is a lack of production capacity throughout the European Union,” Moise said, according to Agerpres.

In his opinion, through these measures, the state destroys precisely the producers – all those who have to keep every MW in operation and come up with investments.

“Unfortunately, the devil is in the details, and when the legislator wrote this law, it was in a hurry, even a member of the industry committee of Deputies Chamber said that we have made so many laws quickly before, improvised, let’s not rush this law and in the end it was also an improvised law, made under political pressure,” added the representative of the investors in renewable energy.

He pointed out that at the moment the law is ambiguous and it is not known if the tax applies only to the energy produced or to that purchased from the market.

“Transactions in Romania are not made on energy produced, but on energy packages. If we apply that overtaxation to total income, producers could say that the loss is so great that they do not produce, but better close and stop,” added the PATRES official.