Armand Domuta, Restart Energy: “We need legislative stability; companies cannot survive when the legislation changes 20 times in a year”

“Romania is like a sleeping giant. And I think everyone feels that every day. Maybe it’s time to wake up. In what sense should we wake up? In the sense of realizing that we are valuable as a country, as people, as a nation, as companies, as individuals. We are smart. Everywhere you go in the world you see intelligent and successful Romanians.

If we have undertaken this energy transition, we must see what the finality is, what we get at the end of this transition. For us as a company, the most important thing is to reduce companies’ energy costs, because that’s how we help them. Lower costs mean more capital to invest,” Armand Domuta, CEO Restart Energy said during Energy CEO Forum organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“There is a political, decision-making fragmentation. There are actors in the market that pull in one direction and actors that pull in another direction. It will be very difficult to achieve our goals and I speak from the perspective of someone who has developed and is developing quite a few projects. We have a portfolio of 1 GW of projects.

The complexity of these projects and the duration of approval and implementation can reach up to 10 years until completion. We would like to see legislative stability. We started our project 3-4 years ago. What do we do if in 2 years the legislation changes 20 times in a year and the project is no longer profitable?

We would like the political environment in Romania to decide what we want and to say: for 10 years this is the law, it will not change. So that we have time to implement. Let’s stop destroying Romanian companies. How can a company, in any field, survive when the legislation changes 20 times in a year?

Our IT people working on the billing software have all resigned because the invoicing method changed every month. How is this possible?

The most profitable energy is the one you don’t consume, that you produce yourself. We need to have a more integrated thinking, to have some very clear targets that consider the real costs for the realistic implementation of the projects.”