EnergyMin Ivan: Our country, in relation to population's income, pays highest price for energy

Romania pays the highest price for energy, in relation to the population's income, and the challenge is to find a solution to lower the tariff, Energy Minister Bogdan Ivan told a Wednesday's specialized event."When we talk about energy, first of all, we are talking about the security of our countries. And if we remember 4-5 years ago, before Russia's aggression in Ukraine, we had the blackmail with the price of gas in all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. On average, in the last five years, our prices have doubled or more than that, in Romania, in Bulgaria, in Greece, in Moldova and so on. And at that time, if we talk about energy, we are talking about 10% of any product in the European Union, compared to 6 years ago when energy was only 2%, part of the final cost of any product that we have in the European Union. So 5 times more in just six years. And from this perspective, if we look at the average income in Romania and the prices, we have a very clear statistic that shows that our country, in relation to the income of the population, pays the highest price. The effect is this, I don't like it, but it is a difficulty for us, a challenge for all of us, for the Government, for civil society, for specialists, for the academic environment, for our most important leaders in the private sector, but also an opportunity for them to work together to find a solution on how to lower prices", Bogdan Ivan told the 14th edition of the "Aspen - GMF Bucharest Forum" event, organized by the Aspen Institute in Romania.He stated that, in the last 10 years, Romania has removed 7,000 MW from production, through gas and coal-fired power plants, and has not replaced anything, and this brings us to the situation where we have a deficit of 1,500 - 2,500 MW every hour. According to the relevant minister, the objective is to have more energy on the market and for this we must start we are working on gas-based projects."In this sense, we have a very clear message and strategy. We want to use European funds and the Modernization Fund on three main pillars. First of all, storage. We have installed and have approximately 6 GW of energy from solar panels in Romania and 240 MW of storage. The difference is big. It is not enough and when we have sun in Romania we also have sun in Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, and a very low price of energy when we sell in the middle of the day. But it is energy spent for no reason and after that, from 6 to 10 pm, we need more energy and we need it throughout the region, energy that we buy at prices of 400-500 euros per MW on average and in this very clear situation we must analyze the evidence from the databases and invest all the resources from the European funds, from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism, in storage", declared Bogdan Ivan.The second pillar consists of investments in hydroelectric and nuclear power plants, the the energy minister also said.  (Photo:https://www.facebook.com/)