First Stakeholder Meeting in Romania

The Romanian Energy Center Association (CRE) organized on Friday, June 23rd, the International Conference "Milestones towards 100% RES for all Europeans" in collaboration with the Consortium partners from the Horizon 2020 Project "RE-SERVE - Renewables in a Stable Electric Grid". This Conference was part of the European Sustainable Energy Week Program - EUSEW 2017.

The event promoted the two main themes of the Energy Days: the integration of renewable energy sources (RES) and energy efficiency (EE). Over 70 representatives of Transport and System Operators (TSOs) and Distributors (DSO) together with officials from the Ministry of Energy and ANRE, Ministry of Research, decisionmakers of national and European institutions, representatives of private and state energy companies, other active energy associations such as CNR-CME, ACUE, AFEER, RE-SERVE project partners, the public interested in responsible energy consumption practices and other stakeholders interested in understanding the operation of a 100% RES system for safe and sustainable power supply have contributed to the event's discussions.

The main topics addressed in the event included: (1) network integration scenarios of up to 100% RES, (2) network codes, governance and regulatory issues regarding the transition to 100% RES, (3) legal and regulatory models, business models for RES, (4) the development of open, smart, stable, secure and customer centric European smart grid, and (5) innovative practices for efficient energy consumption. The conference was held in the wake of the third Consortium meeting of the RE-SERVE Project organized on Wednesday 21st and Thursday 22nd June in Bucharest. CRE is a partner in the "RESERVE" project with its member TRANSELECTRICA and the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, as well as other representative organizations from Germany, Ireland and Italy. The project started in November 2016 and is planned to run for 36 months.

The conference was organized in four sections: an introductory session, two discussion panels and a workshop and brought together 20 speakers from the Romanian and European energy sector. The moderator, CRE Vice-President Mihai Paun, pointed out the growing interest of the European Commission in research – development - innovation projects in clean energy and digital solutions and reiterated the active role of CRE as a direct partner in European projects together with its members. "The CRE Association is partnering with its members in five International Consortia in Projects funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Program: SUCCESS together with ELECRICA, ReSERVE together with TRANSELECTRICA, WiseGrid, NRG5 together with ROMGAZ and CROSSBOW together with TRANSELECTRICA and other 7 TSOs in Central and Eastern Europe, "said CRE Vice President Mihai Paun. "The total funding for the five projects is over 50 million Euros, of which 2.5 million Euros for the CRE Association, leader and / or participant in different work packages," continued Mihai Păun referring to each of the five Projects: SUCCESS - Securing Critical Energy Infrastructures (Link), RE-SERVE - Renewables in a Stable Electric Grid (Link), WISEGRID - Wide scale demonstration of Integrated Solutions and Business Models for European Smart GRID (LINK), NRG-5 – Enabling Smart Energy as a Service via 5G Mobile Network advances and CROSSBOW - CROSS BOrder management of variable renewable energy and storage units enabling a transnational Wholesale Market.