Moldova Declared a State of Emergency in Energy and Hydrology. Chișinău's Heating Plant Seeks Heat 83 Percent More Expensive, Energocom Reported an Evening Deficit

On Tuesday, the Moldovan parliament approved a state of emergency in energy and hydrology for 60 days from September 26. The vote came after five hours of questions and was supported by 54 lawmakers from the ruling PAS party. On the same day, the Chișinău-based heating company Termoelectrica requested a gigacalorie price increase of 82.6 percent, and the operator Energocom announced that electricity would be missing from the grid in the evening. UNIMEDIA ↗

What the State of Emergency Means

The measure is in effect for 60 days from September 26 and was prepared by the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of the Environment, and the National Crisis Management Center. It is meant to allow the government to intervene more quickly in the event of disruptions to energy, fuel, and water supplies. It is based on a report on the crisis situation in the energy and hydrology sectors. Cotidianul ↗

Prime Minister Vasile Tofan defended it on the floor of parliament by arguing that the risks ahead of winter have not weakened but are overlapping. "Preparing for a crisis doesn't begin when the lights go out, a pump stops, or diesel disappears from a gas station," he told lawmakers. UNIMEDIA ↗

Why: The Reservoir at a Historic Low and Gas at Double the Price

The hydrological part of the crisis rests on a single figure. The water level in the Novodnistrovsk reservoir has fallen to a historic low, threatening both hydroelectric power generation and water supply. The energy part is about price: gas on European markets has exceeded 83 euros per megawatt-hour, and diesel has topped 1,500 dollars per ton. Cotidianul ↗

According to President Maia Sandu, Moldova has no oil or gas reserves of its own and is entirely dependent on imports, with the reference price of gas on the European market having risen two and a half times compared to last year, she said. UNIMEDIA ↗

Also read: Chișinău faces a drinking water shortage as the Dniester's level falls near a historic low

Heat Prices Set to Rise by 83 Percent

Termoelectrica is seeking to raise the price of a gigacalorie from 2,020 to 3,689 lei, or from roughly 100 to 183 euros at an exchange rate of around 20.1 lei per euro. It cites the price of gas as the reason: for the October-to-December period it is factoring in an average price of 21,212 lei per thousand cubic meters, compared to 14,114 lei in April through September. BANI.md ↗

A second request was filed by CET-Nord, which supplies the northern city of Bălți and wants to raise its tariff from 2,201 to 4,314 lei, an increase of roughly 96 percent. Both requests were published by the regulator ANRE, which will decide on them, so the approved amounts may differ from what was requested. Ziarul de Gardă ↗

The price of gas for households in October is not yet known. Energy Minister Junghietu does not deny that gas will become more expensive and has promised a specific figure only by September 30. BANI.md ↗

Electricity Was Already Short by Evening

While parliament was in session, Energocom announced that it would not be able to cover the evening peak in commercial mode. It broke the deficit down by the hour: 4 MWh between 5 and 6 p.m., 59 MWh an hour later, 111 MWh between 7 and 8 p.m., and 55 MWh by 9 p.m. That's a total of 229 megawatt-hours over four hours. BANI.md ↗

According to the company, the cause was not a malfunction but the fact that the intraday capacity allocated on the Ukraine-Moldova and Romania-Moldova interconnections was insufficient to cover demand. Energocom urged residents to conserve electricity, especially between 6 and 11 p.m. Ziarul de Gardă ↗

"Why Don't We Buy Gas from Russia?"

A question that part of the Moldovan public is asking was raised directly on the floor of parliament. Lawmaker Robu posed it, saying some citizens were asking about it. Tofan answered matter-of-factly rather than ideologically: "Even if we hypothetically had a contract, we wouldn't be able to get that gas into Moldova — Ukraine doesn't allow Russian gas to be transported through pipelines on its territory. It's a speculative alternative." UNIMEDIA ↗

The prime minister also rejected a proposal to cut VAT and excise duty on fuel, submitted that same day by lawmaker Olesea Stamate. He argued based on who would benefit most from the cut: "The bigger the car — a BMW with a five-liter engine — the more it gains from a cut in VAT and excise duty. People without cars would pay for it." BANI.md ↗

Gestures Instead of Measures

Alongside this, a layer of symbolic steps is unfolding. Energocom announced savings of 17.5 million lei, or about 870,000 euros, by cutting wage costs and postponing IT investments. Moldovagaz CEO Vadim Ceban, in a gesture of solidarity with the population, gave up half of his fourth-quarter salary. Ziarul de Gardă ↗

Measured against the requested heat price increase, these are negligible sums, but they say something about how the government is communicating the crisis. Tofan himself, when asked about savings, mentioned that window replacement at the government office had been limited to the first three floors. UNIMEDIA ↗

Moldova has been a European Union candidate country since 2022, and Tofan's government describes accession as its priority. Energy vulnerability is thus also a political topic: a country with no reserves of its own buys electricity via Romanian and Ukrainian interconnections, while Russian gas has become practically inaccessible to it since the halt of transit through Ukraine.

Limits of This Account

The state of emergency is a legal framework, not a list of measures. The published sources say it will let the government act more quickly, but the specific steps it will take under it are not yet known, and a full list of the powers it grants has not been published either. Assessing it by its consequences is therefore only possible retrospectively.

What's more, the tariff figures so far are only requests from two companies. The regulator ANRE will decide on them, and it cannot be ruled out that it will approve lower amounts. Likewise, Tuesday's evening deficit was one specific evening, not a permanent state, and the sources do not say whether outages actually occurred.

The sources for this article are Moldovan. Ziarul de Gardă and BANI.md are independent newsrooms, while UNIMEDIA and Cotidianul are news portals that covered the session live. The opposition's perspective appears in them only through questions asked on the floor of parliament, so the counterargument to the government's framing is less represented in the text than the government's version.

What hotinfo Is Watching

Illustrative photo: the building of the Moldovan parliament in Chișinău, November 2023. Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.