Romanian Minister of Energy Anton Anton said af-ter meeting with representatives of Energy Com-plex (EC) Oltenia that authorities were considering the idea of exempting the companies who produce electricity using coal from paying recently intro-duced 2 % turnover tax.
Minister Anton added that the tax cut is justified considering that these companies must also pay CO2 emission certificates, which are very expen-sive, accounting for over 30 % of the coal-based energy production costs.
According to him, one of the biggest problems is the need for CO2 certificates, which account for almost 40 % of the turnover. The certificates have reached the price that Romanian companies can-not sustain, therefore the Ministry presented the problem to the European Commissioner for Ener-gy. The Ministry will have to come up with a scheme which will allow EC Oltenia and other simi-lar coal-based companies to have less of a burden due to these certificates. They were introduced to encourage decarbonization, and EC Oltenia‘s fu-ture plans already include new technologies, which will slowly help it cut emissions.
