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Government of Romania adopted on Wednesday an exemption of 40 to 85% for large industry players from the payment of green certificates. This exemption may increase the costs for other consumers, but only if the government decides to redistribute the green certificates. But the redistribution is not compulsory.
„According to the Guidelines adopted by the European Commission regarding the public support for the environment protection and energy projects, the redistribution of the green certificates quota has to be applied only to the countries that didn’t achieve the green energy targets,” say the members of the Big Industrial Energy Consumers (ABIEC).
Maintaining the industrial companies in Romania means maintaining the workforce.
While the European Commission targets the reindustrialisation of Europe, in order to maintain the work places and avoid the relocation outside the EU, and in Romania, the industry is responsible directly and indirectly for approx. 1.5 million jobs, ABIEC salutes the decision of the Romanian Government to implement the measures of reducing the impact of the support scheme for the renewable energy.
ABIEC strongly believes that this measure should not affect the rest of the consumers in Romania.
“Adopting a set of measures in line with the ones taken by the European Union has the role of allowing the Romanian industrial companies to have a similar treatment, as other competitors from EU, without affecting the rest of the consumers in Romania”, said Marian Nastase, the President of ABIEC. “This measure, adopted in accordance with the stipulations of the European Commission, does not represent a subsidy for the local industry, but is, actually, a decrease of the subsidy received by the renewable energy producers. According to the European principles, the industrial consumers can, thus, maintain their activity, avoiding the delocalisation and eliminating the overcompensation of the green energy”.
The Government Decision (HG) regarding the decrease of the impact of the support scheme for the renewable industry comes to transpose the Guidelines adopted by the European Commission regarding the public support for projects in the field of environmental protection and energy for the period 2014-2020. This provides criteria on how Member States can relieve energy intensive companies from paying green energy taxes.
Therefore, according to the Guidelines adopted by the European Commission, the countries that achieved or are close to achieving their target for the renewable energy in the overall energy production, among them Romania as well, will not have to redistribute the green certificates that are not paid by the industry. The Guidelines stipulates that only the countries that didn’t achieve these targets, would have to implement the redistribution for the other consumers.
The new HG provides the necessary criteria for the exempt of payment for the green certificates. It allows the companies who have energy costs representing at least 5% of the gross added value to benefit from this exempt. Also, there are agreed the energy efficiency criteria, which the big consumers have to fulfill for qualification.
The European Commission decided to issue the Guidelines regarding the new rules on public support for projects in the field of environmental protection and energy for the period 2014-2020 in order to avoid the delocalization of the industry and to maintain the work places in the European Union. The target agreed for 2020 is to increase the industry’s share in the GDP of the EU to 20% (compared to an average of 15% at this point). The European Commission urged the Member States to recognize the central importance of industry for creating jobs and economic growth. This message has been sent by the EC in the Communication “For a European industrial renaissance”, in January 2014. The EC shows that the industry accounts for over 80% of Europe’s exports, as almost every fourth private sector job is in industry. Besides this, each additional job in manufacturing creates two jobs in other sectors.
In Romania, the industry is directly responsible for approx. 750,000 wok places and indirectly for approx. 1.5 million jobs, according to the official information.
Therefore, the HG regarding the decrease of the impact of the support scheme for the renewable energy shouldn’t affect the rest of the consumers. At the European level, the countries where the green energy developed in a rhythm equal or over the EU requirements shouldn’t redistribute the GC resulting from the industry exemption. Moreover, maintaining the industrial companies in Romania, means maintaining the workforce.
