EconMin Popescu: We neeed support to finance switch from coal to renewable energy

Romania needs support to be able to switch from coal-fired to renewable energy production, such as natural gas, said Economy, Energy and Business Minister Virgil Popescu on Thursday.

"In the energy sector we are talking about the integrated national plan in the field of energy and climate change that we have submitted to the European Commission and here we are talking about the very ambitious renewable energy targets of 30.7 per cent. But in order to get here, we need to see where we are, first. And we are talking about a 25 per cent coal-based electricity production in the energy mix, which means that we can't say tomorrow we're going to remove the coal without putting anything in. We need a transition fuel. Natural gas is a transition fuel. But we need support to be able to finance the transition from coal to renewables through natural gas. (...) At the moment we have only one source of financing, the modernization fund that is created through the sale of the COs certificates. We ask for support so that, through the national recovery and resilience plan, we can finance the production and distribution of electricity with natural gas as fuel. This is very important for us because in order to reach the targets we have to be able to finance the natural gas," Popescu explained at the meeting of the presidency of the EPP (European People's Party) Group, themed "In solidarity for the recovery of Europe."

The Minister reiterated that another important direction in the field of the energy mix is nuclear energy and he wants to continue to increase production capacity in this sector.

"We are glad that nuclear energy has not been declared as dirty energy. It is still neutral energy. We believe that we have no CO2 emissions. It is true that good solutions must be found for nuclear waste landfills. We want to continue to build reactors 3 and 4 and to reach an energy mix with the reduction of CO2 emissions," the minister pointed out.

He pointed out that there is also a very ambitious plan for the restructuring of the Oltenia Energy Complex, under analysis at the European Commission, which aims to create a company with an energy mix from an eminently coal-fired electricity company, with very little coal, renewable energy and electricity based on natural gas.