Gabriela Cacerea and Ruxandra Bologa – speakers at the ZF Power Summit 2023
The 12th edition of the ZF Power Summit took place between 21-23 February 2023.
The central theme of this year’s summit was “Romania, The Region, The Union: Key energy projects and trends that will redefine the European energy, oil and gas market”.
Gabriela Cacerea and Ruxandra Bologa, Co-heads of NNDKP’s Energy and Natural Resources practice, joined the impressive list of speakers at the event, on the second day of the conference – “Green Day: Renewable energies, the pillar of the energy transition. How difficult is the path?”.
Gabriela underlined some key aspects regarding the legislative changes impacting the energy sector.
“More challenging in the renewable sector is obtaining the land, the permits and then interconnecting. As far as interconnection is concerned, efforts have been made to address the issues encountered by developers, in the sense that the deadlines for providing the bond have been extended and a phased interconnection has been regulated in certain cases […]. Ways to unlock capacity reservation by obtaining the technical connection approval (ATR) are being explored. Fortunately, the storage part has been regulated. […] However, the storage part is still expensive, as an investment, and therefore it is necessary to access funds”, pointed out Gabriela.
Additionally, Ruxandra referred to some of the challenges faced by renewable energy investors in Romania.
“Another problem is the provision regarding the 50 hectares we find in Law 18/1991. The initial intention of the draft law submitted to Parliament was to bolster large renewable projects. The initial form of the draft law provided for projects covering more than 10 hectares to be exempt from the area plan (PUZ). […] The problem is not only the law, but also the way in which the law has been applied, through secondary norms, by the Ministry of Agriculture, how the latter interpreted the law.
The solution is to allow PUZs for projects developed within city limits and clarify the situation of the 50 hectares for projects developed outside city limits”, indicated Ruxandra.
The full recording of the discussions on the second day of the conference is available here.
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ZF Power Summit is a yearly conference that gathers influential energy professionals in an attempt to debate and answer some of the most pressing questions in the field and a flag-ship event for the Romanian business community active in the energy and natural resources sector and other complementary sub-sectors.
