The country’s wind installed capacity may double in the two to three years from 2 gigawatts at the end of 2012, according to Arne Osborg, chairman of Monsson Group, quoted by Bloomberg newswire.
Monsson is the biggest wind-park developer in Romania and has projects around 2,400MW locally, out of which 1,700 MW were permitted by the grid operator Transelectrica.
The group built 818MW in wind and sold projects with a combined capacity of 850MW, including to Czech utility CEZ.
“There’s a window of opportunity and anyone who hasn’t invested or committed to building these projects should consider doing so quite quickly, because otherwise they might miss this window and as time goes by, profitability increases automatically without any regulator having to change any laws,” said Osborg.
“The Romanian wind sector is very attractive and the growth outlook, wind conditions, regulation, grid make this sector one of the main investor targets globally.”
Romania has attracted extensive investments in the renewable sector by granting green certificates to producers, in order to meet EU 2020 targets on green energy.
Wind was the shining star of the industry growing from 14MW in 2009 to around 1,822 MW at the end of 2012, according to Transelectrica figures. Wind projects are granted 2 green certificates through to 2017 and one afterwards for every MW fed to the grid.
Around 5.5 million green certificates have been granted in 2012, according to energy regulator ANRE. One green certificate is currently trading at around EUR 56.
Ovidiu Posirca