Iberdrola seeks buyer for Romanian wind farms

Iberdrola's move follows cuts in incentive prices that have made Romanian wind investments less attractive.

In a preliminary approach to potential bidders, the investment bank overseeing an eventual sale said assets being sold include Iberdrola’s operational 80MW Mihai Viteazu wind farm commissioned last year, as well as an option to acquire a majority stake in a 192MW pipeline in various stages of development.

Aside from these assets, Iberdrola still has a development pipeline exceeding 1GW in the country, and it is unclear if some of these assets could be included in an eventual deal.  

Iberdrola was unable to comment.

Iberdrola had been in negotiations last summer to sell its Romanian wind pipeline to Chinese turbine manufacturer Sinovel, although those negotiations failed to lead to a transaction.

At the beginning of July, a Romanian emergency ordinance came into effect halving the green certificates issued to wind producers to one certificate per megawatt hour of production from a previous two. According to that ordinance, the second green certificate will still be issued, but only from 1 January 2018.  

Iberdrola this year has already sold wind projects in Turkey, Poland and France.