Romania’s Energy Minister, Bogdan Ivan, announced that he has held “intense negotiations” with the European Commission to obtain a postponement of the deadline Romania committed to for closing its coal mines and power plants, currently set for the end of 2025.
“I am at the headquarters of the European Commission, where I have been holding intense negotiations together with my colleagues, following arguments I have been putting forward for two months now in order to keep coal-fired power plants active in Romania’s energy system. How did we get here? We got here because five years ago, those who made decisions on Romania’s behalf committed that by the end of 2025, Romania would completely shut down its coal mines and power plants, in exchange for billions of euros to build new electricity generation capacities. Romania received those billions of euros, but the gas-fired plants meant to replace coal facilities are still only on paper,” the minister said in a video posted on his TikTok account.
According to him, this situation has led Romanians to pay nearly the highest electricity prices in Europe, while there is also a risk that thousands of jobs could be lost at CE Oltenia and across the Jiu Valley.
“With just four months before these coal-fired electricity generation capacities are theoretically decommissioned, I came here to find a solution to prevent this from happening. If we shut them down, we will face even higher electricity prices, thousands of people at CE Oltenia and across the Jiu Valley will lose their jobs, and we will be forced to deliver projects that should have been completed five, four, or three years ago but have been delayed for years. I truly believe that after presenting very clear arguments about how important it is for Romania to keep these units, the European Commission will understand and accept what I proposed, and that we will succeed in postponing this deadline—with the clear commitment I take on: to put in place new gas-fired generation capacities to help temper prices and ensure a stable electricity supply in Romania,” Ivan explained, Agerpres reads.
The Energy Minister stressed that it is extremely difficult to solve in just a few months problems that have accumulated over the past five years, during which only “paper projects” have advanced and have failed to deliver energy “to Romanian companies and households.”