Too many electricity procurement discussions still start with the wrong question: Can we buy renewable power in Romania at a lower price? The better question is this: How do we build a three-year strategy that improves price resilience, strengthens sustainability claims, and stays credible when the market turns volatile? In Romania, that question matters more now than it did even 18 months ago, because the market is moving from “potential” toward a more usable procurement environment for serious buyers.
Romania is no longer just a renewables growth story. It is becoming a structured market story. By the end of 2025, OPCOM said 75 Contracts for Difference had been signed across three auctions, covering 2,630.48 MW of onshore wind and 1,914.34 MW of solar PV. At the same time, Romania’s transmission operator showed a system with 19,016 MW of installed capacity as of 1 April 2025, including 3,095 MW of wind and 2,211 MW of photovoltaic capacity, plus 234.7 MW of storage and 2,442 MW of prosumer capacity. That combination matters: more renewable build-out, more distributed generation, and the first real signs of flexibility entering the system.
That does not mean the Romanian power market is easy. In Q1 2025, Transelectrica reported hydro generation down 39% year on year and renewable generation down 16%, while imports rose 96% against the same period. OPCOM’s 2025 annual weighted average day-ahead price was 114.21 EUR/MWh, and its published forward contract data for 2026 showed traded prices in the low-to-mid 110 EUR/MWh range on several bilateral platforms. In other words, Romania offers opportunity, but it still demands risk management.
So what should a serious buyer in Romania do over the next three years?
1) Stop treating “renewable” as a single procurement decision
A three-year renewable strategy in Romania should not be one contract and one label. It should be a layered portfolio. The reason is simple: the country now has multiple procurement rails. Romania has an active day-ahead market, intraday market, bilateral contract platforms, and a centralized market for awarding long-term electricity contracts through OPCOM. In its 2025 market review, OPCOM reported meaningful contracted volumes for 2026 delivery across its forward and bilateral platforms, which signals that buyers do not have to rely only on spot exposure.
For many buyers, the practical portfolio is likely to be a mix of supplier-backed power, a sleeved or physical PPA where possible, and a separate plan for environmental attributes. The market logic supports that structure: Romania’s PPA ban was lifted at the end of 2021, and market guides now describe a visibly more dynamic PPA environment, with recent utility, cross-border virtual, and industrial offtake examples.
2) Separate energy price risk from renewable-claim risk
This is where many procurement strategies still fall short. Buying renewable electricity is not only about the power price. It is also about the credibility, transferability, and auditability of the green claim. Romania is in the middle of building a more formal Guarantees of Origin framework aligned with EU rules. According to a February 2026 market update, the legal basis is now in place, ANRE must finalize secondary legislation in 2026, the final GO regulation is due by 30 September 2026, and full market opening is targeted for 1 January 2027. The same framework confirms that GOs linked to electricity sold under PPAs may be transferred to offtakers.
That means the next three years are not just about locking volume. They are about timing your claims architecture. If your business needs auditable renewable sourcing for reporting, customer commitments, or internal decarbonization targets, your Romania strategy should already be designed around how those attributes will be sourced, transferred, and retired as the GO regime matures.
3) Buy shape, balancing, and flexibility not just megawatt-hours
Romania’s procurement challenge is not merely access to renewable generation. It is the mismatch between renewable profiles and hourly demand. The Q1 2025 data is a reminder that weather, hydro conditions, and cross-border flows can change market outcomes quickly. That is why a smart renewable strategy in Romania should include a plan for shaping costs, balancing exposure, and the role of storage or flexible supply structures.
This is also where Romania starts to look more credible than it did before. Transelectrica’s 2026–2035 transmission development plan explicitly prioritizes grid modernization, interconnection expansion, renewable integration, and market coupling. Romania is also already integrated into key European market-coupling arrangements, including SDAC on the Bulgaria-Romania border and SIDC intraday coupling. For buyers, that does not eliminate risk, but it does mean Romania is tied into a broader and more liquid regional market framework than a pure frontier market.
4) Match contract tenor to what is actually bankable in Romania
The next three years are a transition period. CfD-backed projects will add depth to future renewable supply, while PPAs continue to mature as an offtake route. OPCOM said that the three CfD auctions signed in 2025 produced strike prices ranging from roughly 54.49 to 79.50 EUR/MWh for onshore wind and 36.69 to 54.18 EUR/MWh for solar PV. That is a strong signal that bankable renewable supply is being built at scale, even if delivered volumes will phase in over time rather than appear overnight.
For buyers, the implication is straightforward: a three-year strategy should not assume that every sustainability target has to be solved with one long-dated structure today. In many cases, the stronger move is to phase procurement hedge near-term exposure with supplier or structured market products, then step into longer-term PPAs or attribute-backed structures as the supply base broadens and the GO regime becomes fully operational. That is not hesitation. It is sequencing.
5) Ask whether Romania is just promising or actually investable
On the evidence available today, Romania looks increasingly investable. Not because it is the most mature market in Europe, and not because volatility has disappeared, but because several pieces are now moving in the same direction: long-term contracting is back, auction-backed renewable capacity is scaling, forward markets are functioning, grid planning is explicitly oriented toward renewable integration, and the environmental-attributes framework is being upgraded toward EU compatibility.
That is why Romania deserves more attention in Central and Eastern Europe. Industry trackers and market participants have already described Romania as an emerging top-tier PPA market in the region, and official market data supports the broader point: the country is no longer waiting for a procurement framework to exist it is building one in real time.
Momentum Energy’s View
At Momentum Energy, our view is that the right three-year renewable strategy in Romania is portfolio-based, claims-aware, and timing-sensitive.
That means:
- do not rely on spot buying and annual certificates alone;
- do not treat a PPA as a silver bullet if your hourly load shape is still unmanaged;
- and do not wait for the GO market to be fully mature before designing how your renewable claims will work.
Romania is increasingly the right location for companies that want to build a serious renewable electricity strategy in Central and Eastern Europe provided they approach it as a structured procurement market, not just a low-cost green opportunity. The winners over the next three years will likely be buyers who combine price hedging, renewable additionality, and credible attribute management into one coherent plan. The market now gives them enough tools to start doing exactly that.
