“Our top priorities right now are people and digitalization. Our electricians are at the heart of what we do, and we give them the trust, resources, time, and know-how they need to work safely and deliver energy where it matters most. Over the past year alone, we’ve dedicated more than 14,000 hours to safety and skills training, and each electrician attends around 18 internal training sessions annually. Today, our team includes 350 ANRE-certified electricians, always ready for the field. We’ve also invested over 1 million EUR in protective equipment and advanced tools to make their work as safe and efficient as possible,” Corneliu Bodea, CEO Adrem Group told The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“In the short term, my priority for Adrem is focus and discipline: delivering our projects at the highest standard, scaling up our capabilities in grid digitalization, and pushing further in areas where we already have proven expertise— like smart metering, flexibility services, and network modernization.

Looking a bit further, I want Adrem to grow into a more diversified group. That means looking for investments and acquisitions that complement our strengths and allow us to expand what we already do well. My vision is for Adrem to be not just present across the energy transition, but indispensable to it.”

What is Adrem’s strategic vision for the next 3 to 5 years? 

Our vision is straightforward: we want Romania to emerge as a leader in the energy transition by 2030. The country has enormous untapped potential—abundant solar resources, strong wind corridors, and an increasingly engaged community of prosumers. Our goal is to transform that potential into concrete progress.

That means accelerating solar deployment and rolling out advanced energy management solutions, while strengthening the digital backbone of the sector through SCADA systems, smart metering, and enterprise performance management – which has been our main focus for a while now. In parallel, we are expanding our EPC capabilities to ensure that renewables—particularly wind farms—can be integrated seamlessly and efficiently into the grid.

This year, we have also brought in two new strategic partners whose support allows us to modernize at scale and move more decisively. In 2025, we are targeting over 70% revenue growth, but I need to point out that this ambition goes beyond financial results. The real objective is to sustain momentum into the next decade and build a system that is resilient enough to meet Romania’s evolving needs. Our vision is all about setting a benchmark and proving that Romania can lead.

How has your leadership shaped the company’s direction in recent years?

My leadership has always been defined by the clear conviction that we must anticipate the transformations of the energy sector. I always aimed to position Adrem at the forefront of change. In practice, this has meant moving away from a reactive mindset and toward a culture of adaptability. Instead of simply responding to market demands, we began scanning the market for signals—whether regulatory shifts, technological breakthroughs, or changes in consumption behavior—and adjusting our strategy ahead of time.

Over the past few years, this approach has translated into a more diversified business model and a readiness to engage with new technologies before they become mainstream – It is how we are diversifying our activities. For example, alongside our photovoltaic projects, we have begun exploring aggregation and imbalance management initiatives that allow us to optimize production and test new market models. It’s a small illustration, but it reflects our larger approach.

What are the main strategic priorities for Adrem going forward? 

Our top priorities right now are people and digitalization. Our electricians are at the heart of what we do, and we give them the trust, resources, time, and know-how they need to work safely and deliver energy where it matters most. Over the past year alone, we’ve dedicated more than 14,000 hours to safety and skills training, and each electrician attends around 18 internal training sessions annually. Today, our team includes 350 ANRE-certified electricians, always ready for the field. We’ve also invested over 1 million EUR in protective equipment and advanced tools to make their work as safe and efficient as possible.

Alongside this, we’re focused on digitalizing how we work—streamlining project management, reporting, and energy operations. The aim isn’t technology for its own sake, but to make daily work smoother, give our teams better information, and help them respond faster to challenges. For us, people and digital go hand in hand: the better equipped and trained our teams are, the more effectively they can use the tools at their disposal, and the stronger our impact on the energy sector – which is why we are committed to continuing this approach. 

What are your key objectives for Adrem in the short and medium term?

In the short term, my priority for Adrem is focus and discipline: delivering our projects at the highest standard, scaling up our capabilities in grid digitalization, and pushing further in areas where we already have proven expertise— like smart metering, flexibility services, and network modernization.

Looking a bit further, I want Adrem to grow into a more diversified group. That means looking for investments and acquisitions that complement our strengths and allow us to expand what we already do well. My vision is for Adrem to be not just present across the energy transition, but indispensable to it. 

How do you view the current state of Romania’s energy market?

We are moving forward, but unevenly. We are adding renewables at speed, nuclear remains a solid backbone, and offshore gas is finally becoming real. At the same time, the grid is still struggling to keep up. Too many projects are stuck between permits and steel, and connection rules change faster than the infrastructure can adapt. Until we fix how networks are planned, financed, and held accountable, the pace of new capacity will always lag behind the targets. The market itself also needs more depth. Most of the liquidity is concentrated in the short-term, while the forward side—where investors and consumers need predictability—is still too shallow. Tools exist, from standardized contracts to a functioning clearinghouse, but they need to actually work in practice. Prosumers add value, but only if we integrate them properly with clear technical standards, dynamic tariffs, and storage. Otherwise, we just move costs from one pocket to another.

And then there is the cost of money. With a BBB- rating, Romania borrows more expensively than many EU states, and in energy that makes a real difference. The same solar park or smart grid project costs more to build here simply because capital is pricier. Predictable regulation and a fair return for networks can offset some of that, but it remains a competitive disadvantage.

So, I would describe the market today as a mix of progress and inertia. We have resources, ambition, and projects, but there is still a lot of adjustments that have to be made if we want to turn plans into real assets on the ground.

What opportunities and risks do you see emerging in the Romanian energy sector?

The biggest opportunity for us lies in the European funding available (the Modernization Fund and the Recovery and Resilience Plan) which could finally modernize the energy sector. The main risk, however, is institutional capacity: while thousands of projects and contracts are announced by the Ministry of Energy, implementation is often delayed. Workforce availability and supply chain issues, particularly for solar panels, transformers, and cables mostly sourced from China, also pose potential bottlenecks, as Romania competes with other countries for these critical components.

We all know by now that our country has substantial renewable capacity (around 3,000 MW in wind, 2,700 MW in solar, and roughly 2,700 MW from prosumers) yet end-user prices remain among the highest in Europe, creating affordability challenges for both residential and commercial consumers. Grid capacity is another limiting factor, constraining the integration of new renewable energy sources and prosumer installations.

What are the main challenges Adrem is currently facing in Romania?

The challenges we are confronted with in Romania must be understood within the broader European energy transition. Of course technology, financing, and infrastructure are relevant, but I consider the most acute difficulty to be related to human capital. The transformation of the energy sector requires a new generation of professionals who are technically skilled and capable of working across disciplines. Romania is not preparing these specialists at the pace demanded by the transition, and the talent that is available is too often absorbed by markets abroad.

Equally pressing is the inertia of our regulatory framework. Although our national strategies appear aligned with European objectives, secondary legislation and specific regulations remain anchored in the past, unable to accommodate the flexibility and speed required by a decentralized and digitalized energy system. This gap between political ambition and regulatory reality creates uncertainty for companies and delays critical projects. Added to this is the persistent bureaucracy in permitting processes, as well as the pressure of economic volatility, which increases the cost of project implementation. For us, and for most private companies in the sector, these remain the main obstacles to progress. 

What motivates you as a leader in the energy industry?

The intensity of working in an industry where failure is not an option. In energy, choices are rarely reversible: when you invest in a gas plant, a transmission line or a storage facility, you are not making a five-year bet, you are shaping the system for the next 30 or 40 years. This is what makes energy different from many other industries—capital cycles are long, assets are built to last, and once they are in place, they define the structure of the market; The decisions we make today carry enormous weight. Choosing the wrong technology, delaying a project, or misreading demand does not simply reduce margins—it creates lock-ins that slow down the entire transition. That responsibility is huge, and it is also what keeps me engaged.

If you could change one thing in Romania’s energy landscape, what would it be?

There is no shortage of things to be fixed, but if I could change one, it would be the way we manage data. At the moment, we make decisions without a real-time view of what is happening in the system – which means consumption is still reported with delays, distributed generation is hardly tracked, and prosumers are integrated only statistically. This leaves us exposed: we license gigawatts of new capacity on paper while the grid is already congested, and we pay high balancing costs because forecasting is built more on assumptions than on facts.

We would benefit enormously from a national platform, powered by AI and integrated with smart metering, that provides a clear, real-time view of distributed generation, storage, and consumption across the country. Other countries are already doing this: Spain publishes production and consumption in real time, Germany’s platform offers a transparent view of the system, and the Nordic countries have gone further by creating centralized data hubs where smart meter data is accessible to market players. Romania has none of this today.

If we built such an integrated platform, we could plan networks more accurately, forecast demand and flexibility better, and give investors a clear picture of where capacity is available. In an industry where projects take years, this would multiply the value of every other investment.