Chairman of the Romanian Competition Council Bogdan Chiritoiu said that high electricity prices will remain in Romania in the next 4 to 5 years, as long as the country uses coal in electricity generation.
Chiritoiu explained that it is the EU’s policy to make polluting energy expensive and economically unattractive. So as long as Romania and other EU countries need this expensive coal- based energy, prices will remain high. Romania does not see a possibility to phase-out coal in the next 4 to 5 years, which means that at least in this period it will see high electricity prices.
He said that the market price is given by the most expensive energy, in this case – coal. This means that authority’s support measures for residential, vulnerable and industrial consumers will remain in place.
Regarding natural gas, Chiritoiu believes that the price of gas will fall. Russia is Europe’s largest source of gas and, for various reasons, it is speculated that Russia has reduced gas supplies at the moment and for this reason we see this surge. After Russia’s deliveries increase, the price will probably fall, not to the extremely low levels during the pandemic, but to the levels before the pandemic, i.e. 2019.
