Romania to suspend 660 MW of coal capacity to meet green targets
Date: March 23rd 2023
Author: Yana Palagacheva
Category: En.vision
Topic:
Electricity
, Renewables
, Coal
, CO2 emissions
Romanian power producer CE Oltenia will suspend production at two 330MW coal units in June to meet decarbonisation targets, which could put pressure on the country’s winter electricity supply.
“This will definitely impact balance, especially in the winter. We will need to offset that with imports as we don’t have any replacement capacity,” a regional trader told Montel on Thursday.Another trader disagreed, saying that the two units – Unit 3 at the Rovinari power plant and Unit 7 at the Turceni power plant – had already been generally unproductive, despite the fact that the Rovinari unit provided some much-needed reserves during the coldest days last winter.
The same trader also said that the refurbishment of another unit at the Rovinari plant would be completed by next winter, so reserve levels would remain intact.
“Unit 3 will be replaced with another one, Unit 5, which is under refurbishment so the overall net effect should be zero,” he noted.
Renewables plan
Romania is planning to build more renewables to boost the availability of alternative power sources and minimise its coal dependency. However, the implementation of this plan has not been smooth.Infrastructure will also have to be modernised to support new renewables or gas capacity.
“There are a lot of pipeline construction projects inside Romania, but most of them are at a pre-financing stage and it is unclear how many will actually materialise,” noted the first trader.
“There is also a need to invest in reinforcing the national grid to ensure it can absorb the extra capacity,” he added.
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