Once the frozen fields outside Bucharest have thawed, workers will assemble the largest solar farm in Europe: one million photovoltaic panels backed by batteries to power homes after sunset. But the 760MW project in southern Romania will not hold the title for long. In the north-west, authorities have approved a bigger plant boasting a capacity of 1GW.
These sun-lit plots of silicon and glass join a slew of projects that have rendered the Romanian economy unrecognisable from its state when communism ended. They include an onshore windfarm near the Black Sea, a nuclear power plant by the Danube whose lifetime is being extended by 30 years, and a fast-spreading patchwork of solar panels topping homes and shops across the country.
“The trend is irreversible,” said Liviu Gavrilă, vice-president of the Romanian Wind Energy Association and manager at Enery, which is building the solar farm. “But we need to play it smart.”
Few would consider Romania a climate leader, but on one metric it has found a notable success: decoupling economic growth from pollution. The country has decoupled economic growth from pollution faster than anywhere else in Europe, and perhaps even the world. Its net greenhouse gas emissions intensity fell by 88% between 1990 and 2023, meaning each dollar’s worth of economic activity heats the planet almost 10 times less than it did before. Emissions have plunged by 75%.
How did Romania achieve this? And can its transformation keep pace with evolving energy demands and geopolitical shifts?
‘History happening’
Under the oppressive reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s economy became heavily industrialised and polluted. Energy-hungry factories sprang up faster than power plants could handle, leading the country to rely on low-grade lignite and heavy oil to keep production lines moving. When Ceaușescu was executed and industries privatised, factories closed, mines shut, and power plants slashed output.
Simultaneously, world leaders began acknowledging the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions. Signatories of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol targeted industrialised countries with reduction targets, using 1990 as a benchmark.
The initial drop in Romania’s emissions was, according to Ioana-Maria Petrescu, a former finance minister of Romania who founded a climate nonprofit, “history happening, not active, policy-led decarbonisation.” However, she added, this trend continued, aided by Romania’s accession to the European Union.
Romania’s entry into the EU in 2007 imposed higher environmental standards, forcing the closure of unprofitable factories previously supported by state aid. The EU’s emissions trading system put a price on carbon, and its modernisation fund provided funds to clean up the energy system. The completion of a nuclear power plant in Cernavodă, commissioned under Ceaușescu, and the introduction of a green certificate scheme to fund renewables further contributed to the shift.
In the 17 years following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the carbon intensity of Romania’s power sector fell by 9.2%. In the subsequent 17 years, it plunged by 52%.
The shift to a service-based economy also impacted agriculture, with livestock numbers declining and farms modernising or closing. Forests, previously heavily logged under communism, began to recover and expand, increasing the amount of carbon absorbed by nature by 77%, according to official data.
However, the benefits of this economic boom, which has doubled real GDP since 1990, have not been evenly distributed. Communities withered after workers lost jobs in factories and mines. Former coal towns experienced depopulation as young people sought better opportunities abroad.
“It’s good that we reduced greenhouse emissions and it’s good that now we’re relying on different types of industries,” said Petrescu. “But the transition was brutal for a lot of people.”
Low-hanging fruit
Romania’s success in decoupling offers a potential model for other nations. Dozens of countries have decoupled their economies from emissions, and many more have managed to grow while emissions increase at a slower rate. An analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit found that countries representing 92% of the world’s economy have achieved one of these milestones.
However, the pace of change remains slow. A 2023 study of 36 rich countries found that only 11 had fully broken the link between GDP and CO2, and none were doing so quickly enough to meet their Paris Agreement targets. William Lamb, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, also noted that the easiest gains have been made in the power sector, and replicating this success in sectors like buildings and transport will be more challenging.
“We’ve been chucking coal into ovens and producing power with steam turbines for decades, and actually just switching those things off … is really low-hanging fruit,” said Lamb. “It’s happening very fast in some countries, and it looks like it will continue happening very fast, but that’s just a chunk of our emissions.”
Recent setbacks in climate policy in many developed nations, including the US and the EU’s rollback of parts of its Green Deal, raise concerns about maintaining momentum. The ECIU report identified nine countries that had achieved absolute decoupling before 2015 but reversed progress in the decade after.
These include Latvia and Lithuania, which, like Romania, experienced economic restructuring after the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia, meanwhile, has steadily increased its emissions since the initial post-Soviet shock.
“Russia doubled down on having a large extractive oil and gas sector, coupled with a highly inefficient use of those resources domestically,” said Lamb. “It’s interesting that Romania – which is on the periphery of Europe and not as wealthy as countries like France, Germany, the UK or Sweden – has still managed to make substantive progress.”
The question remains whether Romania can sustain this progress.
The birthplace of big oil
In the mid-19th century, Marin Mehedinţeanu discovered oil near Ploiești, roughly 60km north of Bucharest. He built the world’s first oil refinery in 1857, making Bucharest the first city lit entirely by distilled crude. During World War II, Ploiești oilfields fuelled one-third of the German war machine.
Today, despite global efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, Romania is pursuing new oil and gas projects. Drilling began in the Black Sea in March for Neptun Deep, expected to be the largest gas extraction project in Europe. A new pipeline connecting the project to the rest of Europe was completed in July. The Mintia coal plant, previously mothballed, is being converted into a gas-fired power plant.
Romania’s dash for gas has drawn criticism from environmental campaigners, who fear it will hinder progress towards climate goals. A report by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity found that a planned expansion of gas-fired power plants in Romania may not be economically viable and could require decommissioning by 2035.
Coal plants scheduled for closure were granted a reprieve in October, citing concerns about blackouts and job losses. A European Commission assessment in May found Romania’s National Energy and Climate Plan lacked ambition regarding carbon sinks and renewable energy. Preliminary emissions data suggests a slight increase in pollution in 2024, even as the economy stagnated.
Public support for ambitious climate action remains low. A Eurobarometer survey found that the share of Romanians who do not consider climate breakdown a serious problem is double the EU average.
Despite these challenges, Romania’s achievements in decoupling emissions remain significant. Its net greenhouse gas emissions have fallen to just 3 tonnes per person, second only to Sweden among European nations.
Romania’s journey could offer valuable lessons for other Eastern European countries and developing nations seeking to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability. However, as Mihnea Cătuți, executive director of Energy Policy Group, cautioned, “what’s happened in Romania should never turn into something preachy.”
“Romania used to be an oil and gas country for a century before it managed to decouple its emissions,” he added. “But you get to a point at which growth simply doesn’t come from that any more.”
