Romania ready to protect energy-intensive companies against high CO2 prices until 2030

The Romanian Government has mandated the ministry of energy to start talks with the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission to extend until 2030 the state aid scheme to subsidize from the budget the large industrial electricity consumers in Romania, hit by electricity prices driven up by the costly CO2 certificates, Profit.ro reported.

The scheme has been in force since 2019 and expired at the end of 2021 when the Government disbursed EUR 130 mln to 34 recipients such as aluminium maker Alro and fertilizers producer Azomures.

In 2020, the volume of disbursements under the scheme, in close relation to the price of the CO2 certificates, was EUR 84 mln for 33 beneficiaries.

The logic of the scheme is that it prevents the relocation of greenhouse gas emissions outside the European Union, followed by some 200,000 jobs in energy-intensive industries that contribute 6% to the country’s GDP.

The recipients of the scheme are energy-intensive consumers with activity in the field of production of textile fibres production, manufacture of leather garments, manufacture of paper and cardboard, extraction of ferrous ores, extraction of minerals for the chemical industry, manufacture coke oven products, manufacture of other basic inorganic chemicals, manufacture of fertilizers and nitrogen products, manufacture of synthetic and artificial fibres, production of ferrous metals, in primary forms, and ferroalloys, aluminium metallurgy, production of lead, zinc and tin and copper metallurgy.

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