Romania Bids Farewell to Coal

This week, Romania announced that it was ditching coal, thus joining the majority of EU member states that have made a pledge to phase out their coal industries. Romania’s plan sees a total coal phase-out by 2032. In the meantime, in 2022 the country will come up with legislation to address the socio-economic impacts of closing down coal mines.

To balance things out, Romania is planning to boost its share of renewable power sources, with specific plans to invest in offshore and onshore wind generation. It hopes to access its portion of the EU economic recovery funds to finance several investments.

Incidentally, the country relies much less upon coal than it used to during communism, today using predominantly natural gas and nuclear to generate electricity. Meanwhile, EU carbon charges on coal have made existing coal-fired power generation facilities in Romania uneconomic.

Source: Euractiv