Over the last two decades Europe’s energy policy has consistently been geared towards achieving three main objectives: energy in the European Union should be affordable and competitively priced, environmentally sustainable and secure for everybody. According to European Commission “Progress towards completing the Internal Energy Market” report, released Monday, Romania needs further electricity interconnection to exploit the high generation capacity, as euobserver.com informs.
“Correct and complete transposition of the Third Energy Package and its practical application needs to continue. Romania should complete the corporate governance reform of state-owned enterprises in the energy sector in line with the internal energy market legislation. Romania’s roadmap for phasing out regulated gas and electricity prices and improving retail competition and energy efficiency needs to be fully implemented. The process of electricity market coupling should be finalized following the target model”, the report reads. According to EC officials, the completion of gas interconnections and reverse flow projects, including physically linking the Romanian gas system with the transit pipelines, are necessary to strengthen security of supply and to enable increased exploitation of domestic gas resources. “Romania is on track to meet its 2020 renewable target but upgrades to the network would help integrate more renewables.”
The number of consumers supplied on a competitive basis (which have chosen to change suppliers) has constantly increased; in December 2013 it was close to 19,200.
The switching rate in the retail electricity market is still very low (0.03 percent in 2012). “62 suppliers operate in the retail market while the degree of real market opening has only slightly increased from 55 percent in 2012 to 57 percent in 2013. Due to the negative or slim margins allowed by price regulation, suppliers are discouraged from making offers outside their supply areas, therefore consumer choice is in reality often very limited,” EC notes.
Consumers’ overall assessment of the retail electricity and gas markets is just above the EU average (72.7 points compared to 72.0 and 74.4 compared to 74.1), corresponding to 16th and 15th place EU- wide, respectively. EC appreciates that the gas market has seen a considerable improvement (of 3.4. points) between 2012 and 2013 (second highest increase domestically). “However, both markets score low on actual switching, ease of switching, choice and overall consumer satisfaction (for gas market the latter three rank among the three lowest in the EU). In addition, the incidence of consumer problems is relatively high (3rd highest in the gas market)” the report outlined.