Research on impact of the EU climate-energy package on Romanian industrial activities

Abstract

The present study is aimed at initiating a unitary procedure and coherent original analysis concerning the consequences of implementing of each proposal from the EU package on “climate change and energy” towards Romania. For long term, the attention should be given to Carbon Capture and Storage technologies, which involve the capture, transport and geological storage of CO2, applied especially to electricity producers and highly polluting industries. The main scope consists of developing a methodology that predicts the costs for CO2 rich technologies to be paid. It is based on ten case studies, representative for Romania. The research was carried out according to the following steps: (i) analysis of the current situation and projected evolution of industrial sectors in Romania; (ii) identification of the costs induced by the application of the EU legislative package on the types of industrial activities, by means of an original mathematical model created; and (iii) cost evolution induced by the legislative package for the period 2013-2020. The investigation carried out has clearly shown that the most affected sectors are those which produce electricity and heat. These sectors emit the largest amount of CO2 per unit of production. It means they will obviously have to buy the largest quantity of emission allowances. In parallel, one demonstrated that industrial sectors consuming electrical energy for the production processes are affected by the large quantities of emissions generated into the atmosphere and, indirectly, by the amount of electricity purchased. Thus, production costs will increase by 20-70% compared to 2009, depending on the type of industrial activity. In terms of application of legislative provisions stipulated by Directive 2009/29/EC, starting from 2013, the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions becomes a priority for each state. All industrial units will be able to keep their competitiveness on the market through: optimization of industrial processes and improvement of energy efficiency.