Brussels, 20/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - The European Investment Bank announced on Friday 17 December that it was to grant a €200 million loan to CEZ a.s. to finance the construction of an onshore wind farm near the Black Sea Coast in Dobrogea province, north of Constanta, Romania. It also granted a loan of €70 million to the Municipality of Sector 6 in Bucharest to finance energy efficiency refurbishments of multi-storey residential buildings in Romania's capital.
The €200 million loan will co-finance the design, construction, commissioning and operation of the wind farm near the village of Fantanele, and also the construction of transformer stations and interconnection with the national electricity grid. The wind farm will comprise 139 turbines with a nominal unit capacity of 2.5 MW. Once fully operational, the project will help Romania reach its targets for energy consumption from renewable energy sources by 2020 and respect its compulsory green certificate quotas. The owner of the wind farm is CEZ a.s., an energy holding company majority owned by the Czech state which will implement the project through its fully owned Romanian subsidiaries - Tomis Team SRL and MW Team Invest SRL.
The €70 million loan will co-finance (50% of the total cost of the project) the thermal rehabilitation of 273 multi-storey residential buildings over the period 2011-2013. The additional funding to complete this multi-annual programme will be sourced from state subsidies allocated by the Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism and other municipality funds. The EIB points out that this project will support the implementation of Romania's National Energy Efficiency Action Plan which, through the national legislation, transposes the provisions of the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. (Com-O.L./transl.rt)