Energy Saving News
Russia Struggle to Become Energy Efficient
RESIDENTS of the Veshnyaki neighborhood in southeast Moscow were in for a surprise last month when the radiators in their apartments started heating at full blast while it was nearly 40 degrees Celsius outside.
No problem, district authorities told reporters, we’re just checking the system.
These and other problems with the way Russians produce and consume energy make the country among the world’s biggest energy wasters, using 2.5 times more energy to produce a given amount of goods and services than the world average. This dramatic inefficiency has led President Dmitry Medvedev to set a goal of lowering the amount of energy spent per unit of economic output by 40 percent by 2020, compared with the 2007 level.
Doing so won’t be cheap. The current programs directed toward this end will require 800 billion rubles ($26 billion) of state funds — and that’s not counting money channeled through state-run firms such as Rusnano and the Russian Venture Fund.
Modernising Russia’s energy infrastructure and promoting energy efficiency is one of the five priority areas for modernisation established by Medvedev in June 2009 and overseen by his presidential commission for modernisation.
The agenda includes programmes to incentivise both conservation and the development of alternative energy sources. And while there is much to be gained by upgrading the Soviet-era energy infrastructure, plans to develop new sources of energy continue to be held hostage to a slow-moving bureaucracy and mixed signals from high-ranking officials.
Medvedev signed a decree in May ordering all municipal governments to issue yearly reports on how their energy efficiency strategies are progressing, including per capita consumption of electricity, heat, gas and water.
“Money needs to be spent correctly,” Medvedev wrote on Twitter after a meeting in late June, where he fumed that his energy efficiency ideas are seen too abstractly.
“What is energy efficiency in schools? It’s not just some check marks in documents,” he said at the meeting. “We have to understand that lowering energy consumption by 30 percent in the school means additional money for books and equipment.” He added that the law on energy efficiency should be fashionable for social institutions.
Picture by Josef F. Stuefer
Tuesday 17th August 2010
