Renewable energy's impact on rural development in northwestern Romania

Abstract

Romania has increased its production of electricity from renewable sources by relying on projects situated in rural areas. This paper explores the impact of renewable energy projects on rural development in north-western Romania. The critical review of the literature has revealed that most studies stress the positive effects renewable energy projects can have on employment, demographics, revenues to the local budgets, and agriculture in the host communities.We observed, however, that none of those studies had a quantitative approach and they do not study in a comparative manner these effects. This paper takes a step further and compares the evolution of the four variables for villages with and without implemented renewable energy projects. We compared the evolution of employment, demographics, revenues and processed agriculture land from 2010 to 2014. For the two groups of villages, the data shows no difference between villages with and without implemented renewable energy projects.