European Funding Support for the Societal Effort towards Energy Transition

Abstract

The European Union has planned during the last decades a significant budget to support the implementation of its cohesion policies for State Members. The transition to a low-carbon economy is one of the key issues due to the significantly high social implications resulting from the very high costs that technological transfer and infrastructure currently raise and which affect citizens' budgets. This study aims to develop to the analysis of opportunities and challenges in the use of European funds for energy transition in Romania and it refers to the calls on the dedicated thematic objective financed through the operational programs. We carried out a case study for the Bucuresti-Ilfov Development Region, back to the financial programming period 2014-2020 2014-2023. The financial data were extracted from official sources for the projects implemented in the analyzed region, the amounts being those from co-financing from non-reimbursable funds. The results of the study show, on the one hand, the role of these funds in supporting the budgetary effort to fulfill the thematic objective of transition to a low-carbon economy, and on the other hand, the aspects that made it difficult to implement the contracted projects.