Environment Minister Mircea Fechet said that next year’s enrollments in the „Green Home” solar photovoltaic installation program should be assigned a bigger budget, according to „certain well-established criteria, and transparent tie-breaking assessment factors known to everyone”, emphasizing that the „first come, first served” principle has reached its limits.

The minister made these clarifications at a press conference on Wednesday at the Victoria Palace of Government, where he also presented data regarding the completion of the latest session of the program.

„We cannot turn the ‘Green Home’ solar photovoltaic installation program into a national Olympic contest of digital skills, where whoever is the fastest gets the money. I believe that Romanians must have equal access to this program and I think we owe it to the Romanians to come up with fair, transparent tie-breaking criteria, which we should discuss in advance with the National Energy Regulatory Authority and with all the institutions that have a say in this matter. Starting next year, enrollment with this program should no longer be over in a matter of minutes or seconds, (…) but should be based on highly transparent and broadly known criteria, scores, tie-breaking and assessment factors,” argued Fechet.

He added that the program this year had a record-high budget of RON 2 billion, which financed almost 67 thousand Romanian households.

The minister also said that by October 13, the Environmental Fund Administration will publish on its website the consolidated list of the approved panel installers. In a different thread, he dismissed suspicions about the apparently too short enrollment times – somewhere between one and two minutes on average – which some attributed to the illegal use of AI, stating that in the situation where demand exceeds by far the funding supply, the first conclusion is that an even higher allocation for the program is required.

AGERPRES