Volker Raffel, E.ON: “Romania needs to change the speed of investments to the maximum level, otherwise we risk having a national problem”

“Romania risks reaching an impasse. At the end of this year, we will connect 3,000 MW of photovoltaic sources in Romania, and we already have moments when the energy distributed is below 3,000 MW. If we do nothing, we will have problems. At Delgaz Grid, in Moldova, we had 50 connection requests from prosumers in January. Now, we have 100 requests per day.

Postponing the regulation period and maintaining the current energy distribution tariff have brought us to the situation where Romania is poorly prepared. Now we need to change the speed of investments to the maximum level, otherwise we risk reaching a deadlock and having a national problem,” Volker Raffel, CEO of E.ON Romania said at Regional Energy Forum (FOREN 2024).

“We are ready to invest if the regulatory framework is suitable and that is what we are talking about in essence.

I read the draft of Romania’s energy strategy, which contains many good things, but two things are still missing: 1) a clear vision of the open market. We need a market with a reference price, because this is the only way Romania can play the role of an energy hub in the region. The second thing that is missing in the energy strategy is the role of energy distribution networks.

We need to increase the distribution rates so that we can make large investments in the networks. A slight increase in distribution rates will have a low impact on our customers, but it will help us to make more investments.”

The Romanian National Committee of the World Energy Council (CNR-CME) organizes on June 16-18 the biennial Regional Energy Forum (FOREN).

Having reached its 17th edition, FOREN 2024 responds to a real need for analysing and debating on the status of the energy sectors in the Central and Southeast European region and identifying cooperation solutions in energy domain.