World Energy Council Romania Conference: Instruments for 2025
The conference “World Energy Council Instruments for the Year 2025. Their Usefulness for Romania” was organized on November 20, 2025, by the Romanian National Committee of the World Energy Council (WEC/RNC), in partnership with UNST Politehnica Bucharest and analysed the set of tools developed by the World Energy Council (WEC) for a better definition and management of successful energy transitions.
To address the key challenges facing the energy community, since 2011 the World Energy Council has developed a set of five tools, constantly updated. The five tools are: 1) World Energy Scenarios, 2) World Energy Issues Monitor, 3) World Energy Trilemma Index, 4) Dynamic Resilience Framework, 5) Innovation Insights.
During the event, the discussions focused on the three most important WEC tools for 2025, embodied in studies used for the energy transition. These are: “World Energy Scenarios”, “World Issues Monitor” and “Energy Trilemma Index”.
The conference was opened by the President of CNR-CME Ion Lungu, who appreciated that we are in a complex moment, in which things already achieved are combined with ideas about what could be done in the future, considering that there are a series of challenges and opportunities at the same time.
“We must admit that Romania’s energy situation is not one of the best at the moment, but perhaps not as disastrous as it is sometimes presented. For years, at conferences it was said what projects we have, but that we do not have money. We are now in a situation where, for better or worse, there is money, but we must have projects, manage to absorb all the funds we have and, above all, through the investments we make, ensure a safe and stable functioning of the energy system, with a low level of emissions and at affordable prices for consumers,” Ion Lungu said.
The tools and studies developed by the World Energy Council represent an essential source of knowledge and strategic guidance. The three instruments of the energy transition provide comparative assessments on energy security, equity and sustainability, helping to define public policies and the opportunity of investments. Also, the global scenarios and reports developed by the WEC support the transition process towards a decarbonized economy, based on innovation, efficiency and international collaboration.
“The WEC tools come with many ideas, results from analyses and discussions, from investigation based on questionnaires sent to the member countries of the Council to be completed, which can provide quite good and useful information and elements to decision-makers in the development of energy policies,” the official from the WEC/RNC also specified.
At the end of his speech, the President of CNR-CME specified the importance of the World Energy Council, as an independent organization, 100 years old, covering all segments of the energy field, founded after the First World War in a rather complicated context, when politically uncommitted specialists from all countries met, discussed and found that the role of these meetings in which topics were addressed that were often not on the agenda of political factors, but could help a lot, and they came to the conclusion that such an association with a permanent character needed to be created. “Through the activity of WEC/RNC, a founding member of the World Energy Council since 1924, Romania is an active part of the global network of WEC, contributing to the exchange of good practices and the consolidation of a competitive, resilient and sustainable energy sector,” added Ion Lungu.
In turn, Prof. Dr. Eng. Horia Necula, Vice-Rector at UNST Politehnica Bucharest, emphasized the usefulness of the tools developed by WEC and made available by WEC/RNC, which the University has fully utilized in the work carried out.
Referring to the WEC tool “Global Energy Scenarios”, which also includes the chapter on electric mobility, as an essential part of the transformation of the transport sector, Professor Horia Necula spoke about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) influences our daily lives and perhaps even the jobs of the future, but he opined that it will only affect the energy sector to a very small extent. What will affect AI, however, will be the increase in energy consumption.
“It is estimated that, if the growth trend in energy consumption is the same as now, in about 10 years energy consumption will increase by at least 50%. It would be interesting to see what the trend in this regard would be regarding the increase in consumption related to the development of AI and decarbonization, but also how we will be able to achieve the targets imposed by the EU for 2035-2050, especially the most important one regarding the total decarbonization of the energy sector by 2050. I see them as difficult to achieve under current conditions,” noted, among others, Professor Horia Necula.
Regarding electric mobility, the speaker mentioned that the electric car fleet is quite small in our country, also considering the housing structure of our country. “The problem remains the availability of energy, and studies in these directions will be welcome,” he added.
Present at the event, Sorin Elisei, Director General at the General Directorate of Energy – Ministry of Energy, drew attention to two challenges. “It is about the quality and stability of the network. After that, we have the problem of being able to put on the table a quantity of energy equivalent to 1,500 MW necessary for a project for which Romania is making an application to the European Commission in order to attract financing.”
Appreciating the usefulness of the tools developed by the World Energy Council, the speaker mentioned: “Unfortunately, lately there have been a series of problems, and we have not been able to get out of the patching and urgent repair area. There are many problems that come from the past and which have now started to break down little by little. These WEC tools would be very useful in what should be a cycle: strategy, action plan, implementation, monitoring and then you take your data from the results of your policies, then you learn and, from the lessons learned, you go and apply them further.”
After briefly reviewing the most important aspects of the energy market, Sorin Elisei pointed out how we need to attract young people to the energy sector and how to rethink curricula in order to cover this area of competence. “Once again, we need to go back to the tools. We need to have people who come to work and find ways to attract them. How do you attract competent people to this area? What is the curriculum that you need to develop?”.
The Executive Director General of WEC/RNC Ștefan Gheorghe brought up the importance of the quality of responses by WEC/RNC members to the questionnaires sent by CME regarding the World Energy Issue Monitor, which results in hot issues, with uncertainty and high impact, regarding the transition of the energy sector, in order to create a map of the issues, as accurate and realistic as possible, which represents the basis for the analysis of future policies and strategies at national level, with influence at regional level.
“All analyses are carried out on three levels, national, regional and global. By responding to the WEC questionnaires, we transmit information received from Romanian experts, which is to be processed at the national, regional, European and global levels. Finally, this allows us to take note of the information from companies, the academic environment, the authorities in our country and to compare ourselves with the issues of the countries in the South-Eastern European area,” stated Ștefan Gheorghe.
The country profiles related to the WEC instruments, World Energy Trilemma Report and World Energy Issue Monitor, were attended by members of the Scientific Council of WEC/RNC and of Future Energy Leaders – FEL Romania, part of WEC/RNC.
The speakers emphasized the importance of the three dimensions of the global concept of the Energy Trilemma and analysed the situation in Romania, with the aim of clarifying and informing on the most recent results of the study on the Energy Trilemma and obtaining competent feedback on these results regarding: the general framework of the World Energy Trilemma Index and the indices considered in the World Energy Trilemma Report; Romania’s profile that determines the evaluation of the indices in the World Energy Trilemma Report and the World Energy Issues Monitor 2025; Romania’s position in the hierarchy of indices in European countries; the policies that determined Romania’s position in the European hierarchy in 2025, taking into account international influences and national decisions; characteristic aspects resulting from the strategic documents of the energy sector in Romania.
The main aspects retained during the conference highlighted the way in which the young people from Future Energy Leaders Romania are actively involved in the studies and current and prospective issues of WEC and WEC/RNC.
The increase in electricity consumption was highlighted and the availability of collaboration between executive officials from the Ministry of Energy and WEC/RNC members was appreciated. The decreasing trend in the EU’s speed regarding the energy transition was also noted, appreciating that the targets proposed by the EU were good, but that their achievement can no longer have the same speed due to the current geopolitical situation. It was appreciated that the energy mix is very good, but equally important is the role of the flexibility of energy systems, as well as the role of storage for the security and stability of the electricity grid.
The Romanian National Committee of the World Energy Council (WEC/RNC) Association comprises the largest national network of energy specialists and is the main energy organization in Romania, a founding member of the World Energy Council since 1924. WEC/RNC is a professional, apolitical, non-governmental, non-profit or patrimonial organization, WEC/RNC focuses the interests of various institutions and organizations in Romania interested in energy issues and its relationship with the economy and the environment, of specialists and civil society.
