RO Govt. seeks to levy more cogeneration fees on end-users

Romania will seek the European Commission's approval for prolonging for another 11 years the so-called "cogeneration scheme" and for enforcing a similar one, according to the head of the energy market regulator (ANRE), Zoltan Nagy-Bege, Economica.net reported.

The fee, already in force for a decade, resulted in no new high-efficiency cogeneration unit, as intended under the very logic of the supplementary fee.

Under the existing scheme, the end-users pay a fee of RON 0.017 per kWh (some 5%-6% of the production price of electricity, or one-quarter of the fee paid to subsidize the green electricity producers (RON 0.064 per kWh).

The funds thus collected are supposedly used for subsidizing the efficient technology under which heat and electricity are produced at the same time, but no such new unit was developed.

The money was rather used by traditional heat and power producers to cover current expenses. The simple logic shows that keeping in place the same system will result in similar results. Possibly based on the same logic, ANRE considers now a new cogeneration scheme: a bigger one.

"The question was how do we encourage new investments in cogeneration capacities, because for new investments a new support scheme is needed, maybe much more stimulating than the existing one. We must carry a study on what this scheme will look like, and I have many questions about how the Commission will judge Romania's request for a new cogeneration scheme," said ANRE's head Zoltan Nagy-Bege.

(Photo: Sarinia Pinngam/ Dreamstime)