Energy must first be available and cheap, then green, says the head of Alro. “Those from Brussels are sitting with their jackets on. I can tell them what it was like under communism”

​Renewable energy is an energy that cannot be used without being balanced, and for this we need gas plants, says Marian Năstase, president of the Board of Directors of Alro Slatina. He criticized the fact that, at the level of the European Commission, gas projects are not considered a priority and all the emphasis is on green energy. “It’s cold in the institutions of the European Commission, those in Brussels are wearing their jackets. It’s trendy, but I can tell them how it was in communism, when we had electricity for two hours a day,” he said.

Gas is the only solution by which in 2050 we can reach our decarbonization targets, at least for Europe, said Năstase, at the Natural Gas Forum, organized by the publication Financial Intelligence.

“It is said that Romania has managed to reduce its energy consumption. No, Romania did not achieve anything. The country’s energy consumption was reduced because industrial production was reduced. This means that we pay less taxes to the state budget. We stopped capacities, we deindustrialized, luckily not fundamentally, I mean we know it’s a crisis and we’re waiting to get through it.

But the consumption has decreased because everyone is running on reduced capacities or has shut down. But this is not a situation that can last: either the industry closes completely, then we put a big stone on top of it – we can do it with fiddlers, it remains buried, or we find a solution to save these capacities, because people work there “, he pointed out.

Even if prices are lower than last year, they are three times higher than at the beginning of the crisis.

The aluminum producer Alro Slatina is the largest energy consumer in Romania and participates, together with the Oltenia Energy Complex, in the project to build an 850 MW gas power plant in Ișalnița.

“For 20 years we have been hearing that we will be an energy hub. So many strategies were made and none were implemented. What does it mean to be an energy hub? The energy should be available, the Energy Dispatcher should no longer be under stress that counties will remain in the dark, and it should be cheap, we should no longer be afraid that tomorrow we will close and leave our industry”, added the Alro representative.

He recalled that Romanians went through communism and remember what it means to not have electricity and to stay in the cold.

“I have a cold, because I’m in the cold. I had to reduce the temperature in the house to 18 degrees. I have also been to Brussels, to all the institutions of the European Commission, and it is cold. Those from Brussels were sitting with their jackets on. I can tell them how it was with us during communism, we remember how we sat in the cold and had electricity for two hours a day. Now it’s trendy, come a year, come two years, the younger generations are also coming who think it’s trendy, but you can’t stay in the cold all the time. You have a newborn, baby, you can’t keep him in the cold, what do we do?”.

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