At the end of January, work began on the new CET in Constanța, the city hall said in response to a request made by Info Sud-Est almost a month ago. The €140 million investment from the PNRR should be completed by June 30, 2026. The original deadline, put forward by the city hall when the contract was signed, was the end of this year.
Info Sud-Est asked the City Hall of Constanta on January 22, 2025 for details on the status of the project regarding the construction of the new CET, given that the contract for the design and execution was signed about 1 year ago. ISE requested clarifications on the start of works and the completion deadline.
On February 18, 2025, Constanța City Hall came back with a reply and clarified that on January 30, 2025 the construction works were started, according to an authorization issued by the local administration last December.
At the same time, the institution said that demolition work started in September. The reply did not include the completion date, but the city hall representatives later told ISE that it is June 30, 2026.
Constanta City Hall’s full response:
„In September, the works to dismantle the existing buildings on the plot and prepare the land for further investments were started, namely the construction of a high efficiency cogeneration power generation source, according to the Dismantling Authorization No. 43/09.08.2024 issued by the City Hall of Constanța;
On 30.01.2025 the construction works have been started according to the Building Authorization no. 1124/16.12.2024 issued by the City Hall of Constanta for the investment objective: „Source of production of useful thermal and electrical energy through high efficiency cogeneration in Constanța municipality”.
Context
On March 6, 2024, Constanța City Hall announced that it had signed the contract for the design and execution of the new CET. The value of the contract amounts to almost 700 million lei, including VAT, i.e. about 140 million euro. The project is financed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. It is the biggest contract signed by the current local administration.
An event was also held to announce the signing of the contract for the new CET, which was attended, among others, by Mayor Vergil Chițac (PNL), Deputy Mayor Ionuț Rusu (PNL), as well as the President of the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE), George Niculescu (PNL).
Details about the new CET construction project
The project „Production of useful thermal and electrical energy through high-efficiency cogeneration in the municipality of Constanța” is the first project in the country to be submitted to the Ministry of Economy for funding through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, said the City Hall of Constanța, through a press release.
„The financing contract for this extremely important investment for the municipality of Constanta was signed in December 2022, and in June 2023 the Government Decision was approved, by which the movable and immovable assets of the „CET Palas” Thermoelectric Power Plant were transferred from the public domain of the state and the administration of the Ministry of Energy, to the public domain of the municipality of Constanța,” the municipality added.
The contract was signed on March 1st, 2024
„The procurement for the design and execution of the new CET has not been without its ups and downs. Following an appeal to the National Appeals Settlement Council (CNSC) challenging the procurement, the procedure was delayed by about a month. The CNSC rejected the appeal, and after a thorough analysis of the bids, SC Elsaco Electronic SRL was named the winner of the tender. So on Friday, March 1, 2024, the works contract was signed.
This project ensures the construction of a high-efficiency cogeneration unit for the production of thermal and electrical energy in the district heating sector, using natural gas, with the future possibility of introducing hydrogen produced from renewable resources (green hydrogen) into the mix. It will be built in the courtyard of the old CET, and the installed capacity in high-efficiency gas cogeneration will be 97 MW,” the city hall said last year.
Constanța City Hall said the investment will have multiple positive implications for the life of the city:
- economic, by significantly reducing fuel consumption, operating costs and expenses;
- social, by increasing thermal comfort and making the centralized heating system more accessible to the population;
- environmental, by reducing greenhouse gas (CO2) emissions, reducing primary energy consumption and automatically reducing pollution.
The company in charge of building the new CET
Only one consortium submitted a bid for the contract. It was led by Elsaco Electronic SRL, the company managed by the owner of the FC Botoșani football team, Valeriu Iftimie. The association of companies that submitted the bid is Elsaco Electronic SRL – Energomontaj – Aquaterm Green Energy – Elsaco Engineering SRL – Vestra Industry SRL – Electro-Alfa International – Alrosel Project.
Elsaco Electronic SRL is a company from Botoșani, established in 1995. It deals with construction works of fluid utility projects. The administrators are Valeriu Iftime and Ovidiu Jitaru. The partners are Valeriu Iftime Doru Popa, Petru Parfenov and Ovidiu Jitaru. In 2023, the company had a turnover of more than 400 million lei, a net profit of more than 35 million lei, debts of 144 million lei and 247 employees, according to the Lege5 portal.
Constanta’s new CET, an investment also desired by former mayor Radu Mazăre
The former mayor of Constanta, Radu Mazăre, promised, 13 years ago, a new CET. „A new CET, a cheaper gigacalorie” was the slogan displayed on the streets of Constanta. In fact, the mayor has been talking about the realization of a new CET since April 2011. At the time, Radu Mazăre said that the investment is between 80 and 100 million euros.
„You have approved, if you remember, a feasibility study to tell us what would be… or what would be the best solution for the people of Constanța: to build a new high-tech cogeneration CET or to build several others to supply the thermal points. There are advantages and disadvantages. If you want, I’ll give you the presentation in two minutes. The most efficient and the most efficient is a big heat plant, a new high-efficiency CET. At the same time, the electricity it produces, because the CET not only produces heat, it also produces electricity and heat. We, in the ten years that I have been mayor, and I suspect even before that, have never known how the price is broken down: how much it produces electricity and how much it produces heat. We have always had suspicions here that thermal energy could be supplied to us at a lower price. If we find a solution for this investment, an investment of this kind, thermal energy will definitely be cheaper than it is now. In fact, it is one of the biggest problems, if not the biggest problem of Constanța and the people of Constanța, and of Romanians: thermal energy…„, said Radu Mazăre during the extraordinary meeting of the Constanța City Council on April 19, 2011.
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