Public policies and the business environment, factors that condition Romania’s transition to green energy. Case study: cogeneration plants

Combating the effects of climate change, energy security and providing the resources we need for life is the greatest trilemma of our times. This conflict could also be resolved through the transition to renewable energy and the implementation of the latest technologies that contribute to the efficiency of resource consumption and the minimization of losses. In this context, the adoption of cogeneration, trigeneration and cogeneration systems, based on renewable sources, intensely promoted in recent years, are solutions that can successfully contribute to achieving the green goals. However, such an approach depends very much on the quality of public policies and the way in which the business environment reacts, being important factors that can condition the pace and succession of the transition to the ecological future. From this point of view, Romania has not made significant progress. Although it has set up a state aid scheme under which it has provided financial support to high-efficiency cogeneration systems, the amount of electricity produced by the beneficiaries of this scheme has fallen by more than 35% in the last 8 years. Moreover, from a technical point of view, these plants remained at the level of the years 1960-1970, oversized and with a high fuel consumption. Based on this reality, the current study aimed at conducting several analyses to justify the causes for which the targeted objectives were not achieved. The results indicate that there is no causal link between the financial support provided and the amount of electricity produced by cogeneration systems, that could be explained by the lack of a common denominator between public and private initiatives.