Green Energy to no longer build Tulcea wind park and Iernut biogas plant

If, so far, most projects would "fall" because of the economic crisis, now they are delayed because of legal gaps. Green Energy Group SA postponed the project of the 200 MW wind park in Tulcea and the biogas power plant in Iernut, considering that the legislation of Romania does not offer sufficient support for the small investors in renewable energy, but only for the big ones. "We have about 300 hectares in Tulcea. We wanted to develop there a wind park of about 200MW total installed power. But the Romanian legislation on renewable sources does not stimulate such projects. The law is made in such a way that it supports the big investors, only the big utility companies are favoured. The small ones are dissolved," said the President General Manager of the company, Gheorghe Tripon, announcing, however, that he would not give up the projects in renewable energies. He exemplified with the Law 220/2008 on renewable energies, in which the Government establishes the system to promote renewable energy, but does it not apply, because there are no norms for its application. "Until 2008, there was no law on renewable energies. There were three vague Government Decisions that did not have the force of a law and which were not sufficiently feasible. Then, Law 220/2008 on renewable energies improved the renewable energy support scheme. One can do something only in the wind sector. But the law is only decorative. It also says there that, if you have projects in producing electricity from wind sources, you receive two green certificates for each MWh produced and delivered to the network. But this is only on paper. You receive only one certificate, as before," said the President General Manager of Green Energy Group SA.

According to Article 5, paragraph 2 (d) of Law 220/2008, "producers of electricity from renewable sources receive two green certificates, by 2015, and a green certificate from 2016, for each 1 MWh supplied to the electricity grid by the producers of electricity from wind energy".

Currently, the electricity production units installed in Romania total about 11MW. At present, Green Energy Group has a share of about 20%. The company has three turbines with a total installed power of 1.95 MW.

Two years ago, the company announced it would also participate in a project aimed at building a 5 MW biogas power plant in Iernut, and a bioethanol plant. According to Tripon, at that time, the value of this project amounted to approximately 80 million euros.

Curierul National