Meeting Romania’s energy security, competitiveness and decarbonisation pathway requires deep investment into transmission and distribution infrastructure, but siloed electricity and gas planning approaches risk wasting billions in duplicated or underutilised infrastructure.
Romania needs to invest approximately €21 billion by 20301 to transform its power generation system. This will involve supporting coal phase-out through new wind, solar, and nuclear power, with additional investments needed for comprehensive electrification of final demand, integrating flexibility sources — especially new storage capacity — and repurposing limited gas infrastructure to support hydrogen and biomethane uptake. Upgrading electricity transmission and distribution networks alone will require investment of €16-18 billion by 2030.
New European modelling from Fraunhofer 3 suggests that integrated planning across sectors and nations could save up to €500 billion EU-wide by 2050. Critically, over 70% of savings would come from cross-sectoral coordination alone. Integrated planning would coordinate electricity, gas, transport and heating infrastructure investments across sectors to minimise total requirements needed to meet system adequacy and decarbonisation goals.
Three structural barriers have prevented the organic emergence of integrated planning in Romania. First, the regulatory frameworks approve investments based on demonstrated connection requests rather than scenario-based modelling, limiting anticipatory planning. Second, network operators are compensated through sector-specific tariffs, creating disincentives to consider the other sector’s existing infrastructure or upcoming plans. Third, institutional gaps prevent coordination as Romania has no authority with a mandate to oversee cross-sectoral planning. Existing authorities, such as ANRE, the independent energy regulator, focus on sector-specific regulation, while local authorities lack the resources and access to accomplish integrated planning.
Without addressing these structural barriers, Romania risks billions in stranded assets while facing increased pressure from the EU to adopt integrated planning through the Energy System Integration Strategy, the TEN-E Regulation revision and the European Grids Package. To harness the benefits of infrastructure planning, Romania should:
- Clarify the remit of integrated planning and explore how it could be embedded within the current institutional set-up, likely within the Ministry of Energy or the General Secretariat of the Government. The body will need adequate capacity to undertake structured cross-sector consultation, and regular integrated network planning.
- Amend ANRE’s decision-making to approve investments based on cross-sector modelling and scenario analyses. Projects that can demonstrate a reduction of cross-sector duplication should be fast tracked.
- Conduct a cross-sector review to identify potential infrastructure duplication, with consideration of cross-sector methodologies used in the upcoming EU cross-border energy infrastructure framework as outlined in the European Grids Package.
- Major infrastructure development should require a cross-sectoral component to their cost-benefit analysis and consider how this infrastructure would fit into Romania’s transition trajectories.
- Embed integrated planning into the Romania’s National Energy and Climate Plan and other strategic documents, and support modelling capacity with funding from the Multiannual Financial Framework or ETS revenues as well as technical assistance from the European Commission or the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
Nadia Maki, EPG Senior Researcher
Nadia Maki is a Senior Researcher within the Energy Systems Department of EPG. She is an energy policy researcher focused on renewable energy financing, green technology and innovation and emerging economies.
Before joining EPG, Nadia worked as an independent evaluator for renewable energy financing schemes for the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, evaluating schemes such as the Contracts for Difference scheme and the Capacity Market scheme. Nadia has extensive experience using theory-based evaluation methods. She has also contributed to projects for DG CLIMA, DG Environment, the Research Council of Norway, UN Women, the World Health Organization and ActionAid.
Nadia holds an MSc in Climate Change, Development and Policy from the Science Policy Research Unit and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex and a Bachelors of Arts degree from Queen’s University in Canada.
Contact: nadia.maki@epg-thinktank.org