Romanian Electrocentrale Oradea gets EUR 33 mln fine from EC for not complying with green certificate procedures

Oradea’s thermal energy producer Electrocentrale Oradea was fined EUR 33 million by the European Commission for failing to complete an acquisition procedure for green certificates, according to the Environment Minister Attila Korodi. The Romanian producer was fined because in 2012, when it purchased green certificates through a brokerage company, the transaction was not uploaded in the dedicated database managed by the European Commission. “In 2012, Electrocentrale Oradea was given a certain threshold of greenhouse gas emissions, and, as with any other company in Europe, if it doesn’t stay within this limit, it must purchase green certificates and upload the transaction in a database managed at the European level. The company in Oradea didn’t meet the April 25 deadline for uploading the data. […] It got a EUR 33 million fine, and this fine must be managed somehow,” said Korodi, quoted by local Mediafax. “The problem is that we must notify the Environment Fund Administration, which will send an imposing decision to Electrocentrale for each of the green certificates that was purchased but not uploaded into the database,” he added. According to him, two thirds of the green certificates purchased by Electrocentrale Oradea in 2012 were uploaded in the database, but one third was not. He also stated that, according to the information he had, the company tried to introduce the transactions in the database “but the European system was blocked at a certain hour on April 25, 2012”, so now it’s not clear who is responsible and who should bear the EUR 33 million loss - Electrocentrale Oradea or the brokerage firm the company collaborated with. The minister added that the company may start a legal action to cancel the fine. When contacted by Mediafax, Stanel Necula, the special administrator of insolvent Electrocentrale Oradea, said that so far the company didn’t receive any notification regarding a possible sanction. Electrocentrale Oradea entered insolvency in 2013, after it accumulated debts of over RON 300 million (some EUR 68 million). Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com