Romania closed its coal on paper and built gas plants from words

Romania has achieved a performance that is hard to match even in an administration accustomed to project failures; it has committed to closing coal-fired power plants, obtained European funds for the capacities that were supposed to replace them, established companies, boards of directors, and directorates, but it has not built the power plants.
It has closed the present before building the future

Through the PNRR, Romania has committed to the accelerated elimination of lignite and coal capacities. In Brussels, the Romanian state presented an apparently coherent plan: we close the coal groups, and in their place, we build modern, combined cycle power plants, using natural gas. In Turceni, a power plant of approximately 475 MW was to be built, and in Ișalnița, one of 850 MW. Together, 1,325 MW of new, flexible, and controllable capacity.

On paper, the transition was impeccable. In reality, Romania was left with closures and without replacement power plants.

We have established the companies. We were just missing the power plants

To implement the projects, mixed companies were established between the Oltenia Energy Complex and private companies.

In Ișalnița, CE Oltenia holds 59.9% of CCGT Power Ișalnița, while ALRO holds 40.1%. In Turceni, the project is developed together with Tinmar. Project companies, boards of directors, executive management, offices, consultants, secretariats, procedures, reports, and compensations have emerged.

The entire administrative superstructure of an investment has appeared. However, the investment itself has not materialized. For years, these projects have produced papers, meetings, and administrative costs. They have not produced even a single megawatt-hour.

This is one of the chronic diseases of the Romanian state: we first build the project administration and often forget to build the project itself. The company exists, the management is paid, the organizational chart functions, the reports are prepared, only the power plant is missing.

For the Romanian consumer, the existence of a board of directors does not replace electric energy. A directorate cannot start at peak evening hours. A secretary cannot replace a 330 MW energy group. An office cannot balance the National Energy System.

They confused the completion term with the bidding start term

The projects were supposed to be operational by 2026. Instead, Romania has only reached the bidding stage for design and construction in 2025-2026.

In Ișalnița, the project company was registered only in September 2023. The financing contract, of approximately 253 million euros from the Modernization Fund, was signed in February 2024. The bidding for the construction of the power plant was launched only in March 2025, and the deadline for submitting offers was successively pushed from July to September and then to November 2025.

After all these delays, the procedure was canceled again in February 2026 because there were no compliant offers.

In Turceni, the bidding for the 475 MW power plant was launched only in January 2025. In February 2026, there was only one offer for a contract estimated at approximately 525 million euros plus VAT. Even if this were declared the winner and the contract signed immediately, the design and construction phase is expected to last approximately 36 months. In other words, a power plant promised for 2026 cannot be ready, in the most optimistic scenario, before 2029. We are not even talking about an accidental delay of a few months. We are talking about the collapse of the entire calendar on which Romania committed to closing coal.

While Romania was doing studies, others were buying turbines

When the projects were designed in 2022 - 2023, the equipment for the combined cycle power plants had certain prices and delivery times. These values were used to build the budgets presented to European institutions.

Other states understood that they should start a race for new gas capacities. They quickly prepared the projects, launched orders, and reserved the equipment. Romania did what it knows best: it delayed. It postponed the selection of partners. It delayed the establishment of companies. It delayed feasibility studies. It delayed documentation. It delayed bidding. It extended deadlines. It restarted procedures.

When the Romanian projects finally reached turbine suppliers, the market was no longer the same. The production capacity of major suppliers had been contracted for the coming years. Delivery times had reached three to four years. The costs of equipment, construction, financing, and maintenance had risen massively. The initial budgets had become insufficient before the work could begin.

The global market is not to blame for Romania being the last to make purchases. The market was the same for all countries. The difference is that others bought when the equipment was available, while we organized meetings about how we would organize the future bidding.

In Ișalnița, the total cost was estimated at approximately 730 million euros, and the European funding of about 253 million euros covered only part of it. The relaunched bidding reached a value of approximately 755 million euros, without guaranteeing the existence of a contractor. In Turceni, the estimate rose from approximately 410 million euros to about 525 million euros plus VAT.

And this was just the beginning of the price increases.

They did not only lose time. They destroyed the logic of financing

European money does not build power plants by itself. It covers part of the investment. For the difference, contributions from shareholders, loans, and bank contracts are needed.

As the project cost increases, the fixed European funding covers an increasingly smaller percentage. The difference must be brought in by partners or borrowed. But a delayed investment, with rising costs, uncertain deadlines, and issues regarding the future use of gas becomes increasingly difficult to finance and especially less desirable for private partners, who move from guaranteed profit to probable profit and are no longer interested.

Thus, through inaction, the management of these projects has not only lost the schedule. They have also deteriorated the economic feasibility of the power plants. They have transformed fundable projects into increasingly expensive, riskier, and harder-to-implement projects.

Who is responsible?

Who is responsible for the fact that Romania should have had at this moment 1,325 MW of gas, which is approximately the capacity of the Cernavodă Power Plant, but in 2026 does not even have firm construction contracts for both power plants?

Who is responsible for the delayed studies? Who is responsible for the bids launched too late? Who is responsible for the canceled procedures? Who is responsible for the cost increases due to significant delays? Who is responsible for the years in which the project companies had management and expenses but produced no megawatt? And, especially, who is responsible for the risk created in the National Energy System?

In Romania, the institutional answer is almost always the same: no one. Mandates expire, directors change, board members are rotated, and failure is passed on to the next management in the form of a "difficult inherited situation."

However, the consumer cannot transfer the bill to the next consumer.

We promised to close coal. We forgot to build the replacement

Closing a coal power plant can be done with a signature. Building a gas power plant requires years of design, procurement, financing, execution, and testing. Romania has treated the two operations as if they had the same duration.

It set firm deadlines for closures and decorative deadlines for investments. For coal groups, there was an obligation. For gas power plants, there were PowerPoint presentations. Now, the Romanian state is obliged to return to Brussels and ask for an extension of the operation of coal. Not because lignite would suddenly become clean and cheap, nor because it is the solution of the future, nor because Romania would have changed its climate strategy, but because the administration that was supposed to build the replacement did not do its job.

This is the true dimension of the failure: Romania is asking for permission to keep the power plants it promised to close because it has not built the power plants it promised to open.

The strategy has failed because the institutions and companies responsible have treated the energy calendar of a country as a file that can be indefinitely extended due to incompetence, ambiguous legislation, and excessive bureaucracy. Today, the projects in Ișalnița and Turceni are no longer simple delayed investments. They are the administrative monuments of an energy transition done backward: first, we eliminated the existing capacity, then we asked ourselves what to replace it with.

And there is a real risk that these power plants will never be built. We will thus be left with the money spent on organization, with project companies, with directors, with board members, with studies and presentations (about 20 million euros, according to AEI estimates) – but without power plants. 20 million euros for administration and paperwork is scandalous, but it is just a tiny fraction of the total bill of the delay, which can be measured in billions of lei.

That is exactly the Romanian definition of a strategic investment: a complete administrative structure around a non-existent objective.