The absorption of European funds intended for investments in energy efficiency projects in the industrial sector in Romania is extremely low due to the poor quality of the projects, said Matei Dimitriu, adviser in the Energy Efficiency Directorate of the Ministry of Energy, during the conference “Energy efficiency for the energy transition – Brașov”.
“On energy efficiency in the industry, at the moment, there is very little absorption. From what we see in the requests received, the quality of the submissions leads to a very small share of the projects that will be successful”, stated Matei Dimitriu. for these reasons, the Ministry of Energy is considering outsourcing some responsibilities regarding the attraction of available European funds.
A solution to remedy this could be, beyond better communication, the Ministry of Energy to attract of associative partners from the industrial sector, with whom the institution can create more coherent and predictable policies in the energy efficiency sector. With the disappearance of the concept of 100% aid intensity in the energy efficiency area, coupled with the application of the counterfactual scenario for determining the amounts settled, it is likely that the new axes for industry should be launched with calls with continuous submission, because investment decisions are lengthy processes, including group-level approvals with laborious impact studies.
At the same time, as a possible solution, companies in the industrial sector could be stimulated to carry out energy efficiency projects, if the financing axes were built together with regional development agencies that know the potential local beneficiaries.
Another cause of the poor quality of energy efficiency projects is the small number of energy managers.
The Ministry of Energy is also analyzing the establishment of an energy efficiency fund financed both from the budget and the trading of CO2 certificates. Government Decision is to be approved by the end of this year, Dimitriu also said.
The conference in Brașov was the first 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 Norway Grants 2014-2021.