AEI Report: Approximately 5,500 homes in Romania do not have electricity, like a century ago

Almost 5,500 homes in Romania, home to over 11,600 people, are not connected to the electricity grid, according to data from a report produced in 2024 by the Smart Energy Association (AEI), with the support of the Ministry of Energy."While Europe is rapidly advancing towards innovative technologies - from renewable sources to digitalization and artificial intelligence -, Romania is left with households still in the dark, as if a century ago. In over 30 years of promises, the authorities have not fulfilled their constitutional and moral obligation to bring light to every home. The Smart Energy Association launched, in the summer of 2021, the "Energy for Life" project with the aim of sounding the alarm regarding extreme energy poverty in Romania. In 2024, with the support of the Ministry of Energy, the Smart Energy Association created the first National Electronic Register of Households Without Electricity (RENGEER). The inventory revealed that there are 5,494 unconnected homes in Romania, where over 11,600 people live - almost half of whom are children. "The majority of homes are located in isolated mountainous areas, with no concrete chance of being connected to the electricity grid," the report states.According to the cited source, 87% of houses without electricity do not have a land registry, and 64% of the inhabitants of these households have incomes below the minimum level in the economy, while 10% of the homes do not have access roads."For all of them, the most accessible solution is represented by photovoltaic systems - which can provide them with free solar energy. In the ten stages carried out so far through the "Energy for Life" project, the Smart Energy Association has managed, with the support of partners from civil society, to electrify, through the installation of photovoltaic systems (panels plus batteries), a total of 71 households in 35 hamlets located in eight counties: Alba, Harghita, Vrancea, Bistrita Nasaud, Cluj, Mures, Hunedoara, Buzau. But this is just a drop of light in an ocean of darkness," the document reads.On the map of areas where there are homes without electricity, Satu Mare county counts 585 households, followed by Bistrita-Nasaud (543), Harghita (468), Covasna (365) and Suceava (358)."The European Pillar of Social Rights, jointly proclaimed by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on 17 November 2017, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, include energy among the essential services that everyone has the right to access. "For people in difficult situations, there must be support for access to these services", states the European Commission Recommendation of 20 October 2023 on energy poverty. "Leave no one behind" is the central principle of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs. It expresses the commitment of all UN Member States, including Romania, to end extreme poverty, eliminate discrimination and exclusion and reduce inequalities, ensuring that development efforts reach all people - especially the most vulnerable. vulnerable and more marginalized," it is stated in a press release from AEI, sent on Thursday.According to experts, the lack of access to electricity for thousands of households in Romania is not just a matter of geography or resources, but of the failure of public policies and social indifference that always leaves these communities behind. Thus, in more than three decades, Romania has launched several national electrification programs, but none have been completed."The lack of political continuity, bureaucracy and legislative incoherence have condemned to stagnation a process that should have been a national priority. The first coherent program was approved in 2007. However, the program did not work, due to the lack of administrative, financial and legal levers. Five years later, in 2012, the Government proposed a new National Electrification Program for the period 2013-2016, but the project was not adopted, and the responsible agency was abolished at the end of the same year. A new attempt came in 2016, in the form of the "First Light" program, initiated by the Ciolo? Government and accompanied by a memorandum with Norway for the electrification of 10,000 homes. The change of government also blocked this project. In 2019, the Government launched the "Photovoltaic Systems for Isolated Households" program, which provided for the installation of "3 kW solar panels to approximately 7,100 homes located over 2 km from the grid. The state offered a non-refundable grant of 25,000 lei for each household, but the program proved to be a failure from the very first stages, due to the poorly designed financing guide and bureaucratic conditions difficult to meet by small city halls or by the targeted families," claim AEI representatives.Romania's Energy Strategy 2025-2035 mentions that 7,500 homes (of which 4,700 are permanently inhabited) are not connected to the electricity grid, and the reasons are complex: from poverty and prohibitive costs, to the great distance from the grid, the lack of property documents or the prevalence of informal housing.The strategic document sets the objective that, by 2035, all households and businesses will have access to electricity, proposing the adoption of decentralized solutions - micro-grids, distributed generation and local energy communities, with a focus on vulnerable areas, but also solutions to modify and simplify legislation regarding the property regime and connection requirements."As a comparison, in parallel with the objective of completing electrification in the next ten years, the Energy Strategy foresees a target of 3 GW of offshore wind energy for 2035. Also by 2035, the share of nuclear energy, which now covers approximately 20% of the country's electricity production through the two units at Cernavoda, should reach approximately 33-35%, by expanding existing large-scale capacities and building small modular reactors - a cutting-edge innovative technology. One of the most important projects is certainly the exploitation of natural gas from the Black Sea, a 4 billion euro project that will exceed the technological limits so far. With the help of state-of-the-art technology, several tens of billions of cubic meters of gas will be brought to the surface from under waters one thousand meters deep," the quoted source points out.Earlier this year, the Ministry of Energy announced the successful completion of the feasibility study for the high-voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnector that will cross Romania from the Black Sea to the Hungarian border. The interconnector will allow the transport of green energy produced in Romania - including from future offshore wind farms in the Black Sea - to consumers in the country and in other European countries.AEI estimates that, based on a budget of 27 million euros, the electrification of all houses without electricity in Romania would be completed, the price of a basic photovoltaic kit being between 2,000 and 5,000 euros/household.Another analysis by the professional association highlighted the fact that almost no unelectrified houses in Romania are among the selected clients who will benefit from vouchers worth 10,000 euros for solar panels and batteries."The eligibility criteria assume the existence of an electrical installation, an earth connection or an energy audit, conditions impossible to meet for households in the dark. At the same time, these homes did not show interest primarily because access to them is difficult, which reduced their attractiveness for installation companies. (...) the official list of vulnerable consumers, the only basis on which a consumer can access the 10,000 euros, is largely erroneous. Many of the so-called vulnerable energy consumers are consumers who are far from poor or are not in a situation of being unable to pay their bills. Those disconnected or those who have never been connected to the network remain invisible to the state. Thus, aid goes to the "wrong" vulnerable, and the most affected continue to be left aside," the energy specialists claim.Also, the most serious element of the construction of the financing guide is the overestimation of the value of the systems - which will lead to huge profits for companies, to the detriment of the national budget and ordinary people who could have benefited from this money."This is how it is that, over 30 years after the Revolution, Romania has still not resolved a fundamental right. The situation is all the more shameful for Romania as much poorer countries, such as India, have managed to do what we were unable to do. Although the GDP per capita in India is over seven times lower than in Romania, between 2017 and 2022 India managed to electrify approximately 28.6 million households through the Saubhagya program (graph, HERE) - more than the total population of Romania. In just five years, a country much poorer than Romania has completed what we have failed to do for a few thousand homes in over three decades, with unprecedented European resources and ambitions of a regional energy hub," warns AEI.The Smart Energy Association claims that it proposed answers and submitted solutions to market problems, validated by concrete experience in the field, but, despite this, neither the proposed public policy projects nor the CSR plans have materialized into state projects to eliminate extreme energy poverty in the country.