Abstract
Many states in Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) possess extensive district heating (DH) networks that were constructed during the days of communist rule in order to provide a universally accessible energy service that supported Soviet development policies. But the post-communist transition was marked by the exacerbation of the sector’s numerous technical, economic, regulatory and environmental problems, accompanied by its abandonment in favour of alternative methods of domestic heating.
Recent efforts to increase the use of DH in ECE as a result of environmental and energy security concerns have taken place in an absence of critical, context-sensitive research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the legal aspects of post-communist DH reforms in Romania, with the aim of identifying some of the governance challenges faced by state authorities in managing the sector.