Romania’s market is emerging as Southeast Europe’s leading example of how long-term revenue stabilisation can accelerate wind investment without removing the need for rigorous project due diligence. Its Contracts for Difference (CfD) programme has quickly reached significant scale.
Romania’s CfD auctions expand renewable capacity
The first auction awarded 1.5 GW of renewable capacity, including 1 GW of onshore wind. A second round, completed in August 2025, awarded another 2,751 MW of wind and solar capacity. Together, the first two rounds totalled 4.2 GW, exceeding the country’s initial 3.5 GW target under its Recovery and Resilience Plan (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development).
The programme uses two-way CfDs, which provide projects with long-term revenue protection around an agreed strike price while keeping them integrated into the electricity market. The distinction matters: a CfD substantially reduces price uncertainty, but it does not make wind output certain. Romania’s official CfD register shows first-round onshore wind strike prices ranging from €54.4898/MWh to €77.325/MWh among the contracts listed in the initial register.
For all CfD contracts signed during 2025, OPCOM reported 2,630.48 MW of onshore wind capacity across 41 contracts. Their strike prices ranged from €54.4898/MWh to €79.50/MWh. These figures show the range of wind awards under the programme.
Revenue protection and project financing
Price protection can strengthen a project’s debt capacity for lenders by reducing revenue volatility and the importance of an extended period of weak merchant electricity prices. If other risks are acceptable, capital structures may support longer tenors or higher leverage than those of an equivalent fully merchant project. The financing effect is illustrated by Vifor.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) participated in additional financing facilities worth €331 million for the wind farm’s 269 MW second phase, bringing total planned capacity to around 461 MW. A 240 MW portion of the extension secured a CfD in Romania’s first auction (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development). The mechanism reduces one of the largest uncertainties in a capital-intensive project, allowing banks to focus more on risks that can be managed through project design and contractual allocation.
Project risks remain despite CfD protection
Other risks remain, including underperformance of the wind resource, declining turbine availability and wake losses exceeding assumptions. Construction delays and grid outages can reduce delivered volumes, while forecasting and balancing costs also remain. The CfD protects the price mechanism; it does not guarantee the number of eligible MWh a plant will produce. Investors should therefore not treat supported projects as quasi-sovereign bonds.
Financing still depends heavily on the technical assumptions behind contracted revenue. A P90 production case remains relevant even when electricity prices are substantially stabilised, as do availability guarantees, the O&M structure, grid connection and curtailment analysis. Negative-price treatment and settlement rules can also affect a project.
European policy has increasingly focused on providing investment certainty through CfDs without encouraging generators to keep producing when the system does not need the electricity. The European Commission says well-designed two-way CfDs can reduce financing costs while preserving efficient system operation and limiting unnecessary renewable curtailment (European Commission guidance). This becomes more important as renewable penetration rises.
A poorly structured support mechanism could shield generators so fully from market signals that they have little incentive to respond to surplus conditions. A better design reduces long-term revenue risk while retaining operational discipline. Romania’s experience is relevant beyond its borders, as Southeast European countries face a shared need for large volumes of private capital for renewable projects while merchant power markets can remain too volatile to support efficient long-term debt.
CfDs can bridge that gap, but they are a risk-allocation mechanism, not a substitute for bankability analysis. Projects still need credible resource assessments, turbines that perform as expected and grid access for the electricity produced. Forecasts must be accurate enough to manage market exposure, and O&M must protect availability over two decades. Romania’s model reduces the long-term wholesale electricity price risk that private developers have limited ability to control; the remaining risks still belong to the project.