The Ministry of Economy expects that the state aid scheme for large gas consumers will be defined by the end of the year, Secretary of State Maricel Popa said.

“In June, we established a working group with the Competition Council, the Ministry of Finance and the Department of Energy to help and find solutions to major gas consumers. We have now 3-4 options and hope to finish the work by the end of the year”, Popa said, according to Bursa.

Ministry official stressed on that once designed the scheme will have to win the European Commission approval.

A viable way to sustain the large consumers can come from the Ministry of Agriculture, which might stimulate farmers to buy fertilizers produced in the local market. Thus, the production of chemical plants that use gas as a feedstock, could increase in the coming period, sources quoted by Bursa said.

In early 2014, Romanian authorities decided to support large consumers of electricity by exempting them from paying a large part of the green certificates (a system with mandatory quota of green certificates enforced to consumers for subsidizing green energy production). For electricity large consumers, a single support scheme was approved by the Commission and is applicable to all Member States.

Maricel Popa also said that the exemption in regard with green certificates has been notified to the Commission and it is estimated that the EC opinion will come in November, this year. The total value of this support scheme is about 750 million euros and ANRE (Romanian energy market regulator) will have to decide who and how will pay the certificates for which the industry was exempt, Secretary of State said.

Source
Bursa