After they have been
\nadvised to save energy in order to pay lower bills, many Romanians have recently
\nlearnt that something doesn’t actually add up. And that’s because the capping
\ndecided by the government through its latest Emergency Ordinance is not based
\non the last month’s consumption but on the average monthly consumption they had
\nlast year. <\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Things are very
\nclear on paper: for 100 kilowatts one must pay 0.68 RON. Between 101 and 255
\nkilowatts, the price is 0.80 RON and consumptions over 255 kilowatts will be charged
\nheavily under the contracts consumers have signed with energy providers. So, in
\norder to see if they can benefit the latest measures on capped electricity prices,
\nthe Romanians must check the bills they paid last year and assess their average
\nconsumption on the year that passed. <\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
But because no one
\npublicly explained how calculations are made, some people have had the
\nunpleasant surprise of receiving huge electricity bills without understanding
\nwhy. According to data published by the National Authority for Energy
\nRegulations (ANRE), Romania has so far had 4.9 million households in the 100
\nkilowatts bracket. A little over 3.5 million households are in the second
\ncategory while between 100 and 200 thousand households do not benefit any
\ncapping regulations. <\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Recently submitted
\nto Parliament, the new capping scheme stipulated by the Emergency Ordinance is
\nexpected to get some new amendments. <\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Both the ruling and
\nopposition parties have come up with a series of amendments to the law. For
\ninstance, the co-ruling PSD and opposition USR have been pleading for changing
\nthe way in which the consumption is charged, so that it may not be based on the
\nlast year’s average consumption, but strictly on the consumption they
\nregistered this year. However, ANRE says this solution is difficult to implement
\ntechnically and the agency endorses the older method based on the past
\nconsumption. <\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The co-ruling PNL comes
\nup with a method based on the average consumption of the last three years. Amid
\npublic discontent triggered by the huge energy bills, Energy Minister Virgil
\nPopescu has this week called on ANRE to do their job and closely monitor the
\nenergy market while the Consumer Protection Office has been asked to sanction
\nthe providers failing to comply with the regulations. ANRE has already kicked
\noff a series of unexpected controls at six energy distributors and in turn, the
\nNational Authority for Consumer Protection has started controls at electricity
\nproviders across the country in order to see how electricity bills are being
\ncalculated. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
(bill)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Legislature in Bucharest is to amend shortly an emergency ordinance on capping energy prices and subsidies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":93242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[31522,33182,29820,28918,34843,30256],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-93241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-anre","tag-cap","tag-electricity","tag-energy","tag-popescu","tag-prices"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n