Valeriu Munteanu, the Save Bessarabia Union (USB) party’s candidate for Chisinau mayor, is planning to build a modern gas-powered co-generation plant if he wins. According to him, this will cut heating bills by a third and boost the city’s energy independence.

Munteanu’s proposed plant will rely for gas on the Iasi-Chisinau pipeline, currently under construction. The facility will cost an estimated 250 million lei to build and Munteanu promises to find long-term loans for this. But only if the municipally is allowed to administer its budget like the Gagauz autonomy does, added Munteanu, referring to the ability to take out loans bypassing the Government.

The USB mayoral hopeful also wants Termoelectrica, the company that operates the city’s existing two co-generation plants and the heat & hot water distribution network, under municipal management. “It must be under the citizens’ control,” says Munteanu, a former Liberal. 

On a more general note, Munteanu says that over the years the Moldovan authorities have done little to escape the nuisance of having to import as much as 80% of the electricity consumed, and in a way that “finances Tiraspol’s separatism” too, given that 70% of electricity imports come from the Kuchurgan plant. Munteanu is asking again the Ministry of Economy to publish all the energy import deals since 2009, suspecting that the reason the Ministry hasn’t done this so far is because there might be something that a certain component of the governing coalition would not want the public to see.