Romania inks MoU with Japan's Itochu to revive long-stalled Tarnița-Lăpuștești hydropower project

The Romanian Ministry of Energy announced it signed, on November 4, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Japanese company Itochu for the development of the 1GWh reversible hydropower plant project Tarnița-Lăpuștești, in an attempt to revive the project that has been constantly put on the public agenda over the past decades but constantly failed to gain momentum.

The interest in the project is relevant, particularly given the magnitude reached by the development of intermittent green energy generation capacities, and foreign companies have constantly expressed their intentions to invest in it – but somehow, the negotiations failed each time. In principle, the project is likely to generate a significant balancing capacity in the country's power system such as to smooth the volatility of the prices on the short-term markets.