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“We are far from having finished the chapter of the energy crisis and I think that a risk is precisely to consider that we have passed this impasse. We must remember that, a year ago, at this time, we were very close to a collapse, both in terms of consumers’ ability to take over the price peak, the capacity of the infrastructure to manage CPT costs, etc.

Although I am a genuine critic of some of the authorities’ measures, in the case of the energy crisis I would like to congratulate the Government, the Parliament and, first of all, the players in the industry, starting with distributors, suppliers, producers, associations, for the way they managed this situation. The joint reaction during 2022 was remarkable, this is how we managed to manage the situation well and we overcame the crisis since then. Now we need to look in more detail and improve things in the future as well.

I hope we will have a warm winter, because I believe that we are far from having finished the chapter of the energy crisis. I think that one risk is precisely to consider that we are already separated from this crisis and, through a joint effort between the authorities and the industry, we must find ways to turn next winter into a period that we should not be afraid of.

Regarding the predictability that investors demand from the authorities, Mr. Bodea said: “I have given up hoping for predictability and transparency and not because of our authorities. We talked a lot in the past about these things and what their lack means. After the pandemic, after the energy crisis and the war, I realized that it is wrong to talk about predictability. We live in an unpredictable environment and we need to talk about how we manage the situation in this environment, which will remain so for a long time.”

* “Romania and the energy transition – Huge potential of the country, but a lack of coherence and action”

Corneliu Bodea says that Romania has a huge potential in terms of energy, but it faces a lack of coherence and action: “I think we are now placed between a huge potential that Romania has, both in terms of resources, position, even energy capacity that our energy system shows today, and a lack of coherence and action, because we have already been talking for more than two years about enormous financial sources allocated to the energy transition and we see very little that is happening practically.

I expect this to work out in the future.

There are three elements that I would call strategically critical for Romania to use this potential, in the period it has left, in order to be able to play relevant.

First of all, I would like to mention the funds. They represent a critical, strategic element, which has two components: their existence and the ability to turn them into projects, to allocate them. We have the money, I don’t think there are any problems in attracting even more than are available today, but we show a weak ability to transform these financial sources into concrete projects. Things are going very slowly, so are the evaluations on projects that have already been launched and I think this is where we need to focus.

The second critical strategic element is the capacity of the infrastructure to take these funds and transform them into concrete projects. I think we have a lot of work to do here too – it is about infrastructure, transmission and distribution of energy, whether we are talking about gas or electricity, mainly electricity, but also the sources of production, infrastructure, the production park.

The last component that I would like to bring up is the ability of Romanian contractors to keep up with this transition, starting from the equipment manufacturers and reaching those who install the systems. On the one hand, they are suffocated today by the lack of capacity, of allocation of funds, they stand and stumble on their feet ready to start, but they do not have enough projects. On the other hand, when these projects become crowded, we will not have the capacity to execute them.

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