Proceedings

improvement of the buildings’ energetic efficiency, which reduces the necessary
heating to be supplied.
Besides assuring the affordability, subsidies are meant to encourage a more efficient
fuel consumption and reduce the impact on the environment, whereas one of the ways
to reach these goals is the promotion of heat and electric energy in co-generation. The
effects of the co-generation are well known in Romania, as the national energetic
system includes several co-generation plants with high-duty steam turbines, covering
ca. 40% of the annually produced energy. To keep this trend, the producer subsidy is
thought to be replaced with a bonus for efficient co-generation, based on the sold
electricity, for which the market and the price will be guaranteed by the public
authorities. Other bonuses could be granted for the use of renewable fuel in the
burning process.
2.4 The performance
The forecasts regarding the future demand of heating energy are based on following
parameters:
� the trends of the energy consumption in households, public institutions,
industry etc;
� the development of the market, with regard to the surface to be heated;
� the heat losses from the networks.
The last parameter is the only one that can be controlled by the producer, as the heat
losses from the networks can be diminished by means of investments, meant to renew
the infrastructure; the first two parameters are exogenous, i.e:
The development of the market, with regard to the surface to be heated, depends on
the general economic conditions, as they determine both the development of the
building market and the connection/disconnection rate of the consumers. The
voluntary disconnection of the consumers from the central heating system, out of
affordability reasons, is a specific problem of the sector. In the water sector,
disconnections from the public network are extremely rare, as consumers usually do
not have an alternative source of water. In the heating sector, the affordability must be
accompanied by the willingness to pay, defined as the part of the income that an
individual is willing to allocate to a certain service rendered. The willingness to pay is
reflected in the collection rate of the accounts receivable, as well as in the
disconnection rate of the consumers from the public heating network. The latter is
usually induced by two main reasons:
� the wish to pay less for the heating – characterizing low income households;
� the capacity to use individual heating sources, of a better quality –
characterizing high income households.
The consumption depends on the price of the heating (starting from the premise that
the consumption is metered and the customer always pays for exactly what he has
consumed), as well as on the efforts to save heat energy. This is the point where the
elasticity of the demand to the price should be debated. A rising fuel price will lead to
rising costs of the individual heating systems and these will become more expensive
than the centralized (urban) heating system. It means that the elasticity of the heated
surface to the price of the fuel is positive, leading to the extension of the market for
the centralized heating systems, due to the increase of the heated surface. In the same
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