Romanian Government has committed to the European authorities, through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, that in no more than a year it will draft, debate, adopt and pass through a Parliament a law of gradual phase-out of coal from the national energy system by 2032.
According to the Plan, by the second quarter of 2022, a law will enter into force that will include a coal replacement schedule, including measures to close/preserve mines and measures for retraining and retraining redundant employees and other measures with a socio-economic impact on the affected communities.
The main risk of not fulfilling the objective is the anticipated slowness of the consultations with the interested parties. The Plan also includes as a promised measure: the completion of the local development strategies in the affected counties, in order to determine the consequences and opportunities to mitigate the negative effects of removing coal from the energy mix by 2032 at the latest. The Plan further reads that Lonea and Lupeni coalmines, operated by EC Hunedoara, will be closed by Q2 2025, while Vulcani and Livezeni coalmines will be shut down by Q2 2032. The Government has pledged to close at least five of EC Oltenia’s nine lignite open pits by Q2 2026 and to replace 1,300 MW of coal-fired electricity generation units with natural gas-fired unit that could also use hydrogen.
