Romania has released information concerning its upcoming first round of Contract for Difference (CfD) which seeks 1GW of solar PV.
The bidding process is expected to open in the coming two to four weeks after the publication of the bidding process information (dated as of 07 August 2023) on Romania’s Ministry of Energy website.
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The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will support the first round of the CfD to help create the necessary legal and regulatory framework for the scheme and implement the tender process later this year.
The deadline for submissions on the first round of auction has been set to the week of 13 November 2023, with awarded projects to be notified during the week of 18 December.
Projects awarded will then have 36 months to commission their plant starting from December 2023, when results will be disclosed. The duration of the CfD will last a maximum of 15 years. The strike price will determine how much a project will receive from the CfD and if the electricity price is below the strike price, they will receive a top-up payment for the difference, while if the reference price is greater than the strike price, owners of the plant will have to pay the difference back.
The funding of the two rounds of CfD is expected to come from Europe’s Modernisation Fund which seeks to help ten member states – among which Romania – modernise their energy systems. Among other recipients of the Fund is state-owned utility CE Oltenia’s solar portfolio of projects, of which 735MW was announced last month.
Mark Davis, EBRD regional head of Romania and Bulgaria, said: “We are proud to play a key role in developing Romania’s renewable energy sector and to support its ambition to decarbonise the Romanian economy, in line with the Recovery and Resilience Plan milestones and country-level renewable energy targets. This new CfD scheme awarded through auctions is critical to unlocking private-sector investment and to ensuring the transition to a resilient and green energy sector.”
The launch of the CfD has been expected for a while now, as covered last year in a PV Tech Premium article that looked at the Romanian’s market emerging solar PV interest in anticipation of the scheme and further expanded earlier this year with a closer look at the Romanian market that is setting itself as an attractive market in Europe.
Both rounds of CfD are expected to add half of Romania’s current National Energy and Climate Plan target to install 5GW of solar PV by 2030. At the end of 2022, the country had 1.8GW of capacity installed, according to trade association SolarPower Europe’s data, however, the NECP target is based on numbers from 2019. Romania is among several European member states that have yet to submit its revised targets, along with Germany and France among others. Countries who have already submitted theirs, have highly increased their targets, such as Portugal or Spain which doubled its solar PV numbers for 2030.
A second round of auctions will be held during the first half of 2025 that will allocate 1.5GW of solar PV capacity.
The information note to bidders for the first round can be read in full here (in English).