Volker Raffel, E.ON: “We need to solve the problem of the regulatory framework in Romania”

“We recently had a discussion with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and he told us that Germany made a strategic mistake by not investing at the right time in distribution networks. He told us that they should have done this earlier, and Germany started to fix these problems. His message was that Romania should not repeat the same mistake, and all of us in Europe need to be resilient.

The energy system for electricity in Romania will add 3,000 MW in 2 years, compared to the 10,000 already existing. This means that we must invest in the distribution networks because they were not prepared for this,” Volker Raffel, CEO of E.ON Romania said at the Energy CEO Forum organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“We invested 2.3 billion euros in 18 years, but now we must invest the same amount in 8 years. One of the problems that we need to solve in Romania is the regulatory framework and we have a collaboration with ANRE on this subject.

Romania can be an energy hub; it is an objective that we can achieve. There is potential for this in terms of production and infrastructure. But for Romania to be an Energy Hub, you also need a functional, liquid, reliable market with suitable platforms.

If Romania becomes an Energy Hub, I think we have all the possibilities to attract investments in other industries here.

Europe is very dependent on the import of natural gas, from Russia, Qatar, the USA. We need to produce natural gas in Romania, and the production here complies with the appropriate standards. At the same time, we also need biogas and hydrogen.

If we use a mix of gases in the long term (several decades), we can also reduce the costs of the energy transition.”