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Rusnano’s Chubais urges to raise electricity prices

Credit: gaidarforum.ru

The head of Rusnano state corp, Anatoly Chubais, said Russia has become one of the most energy-wasteful countries in the world, not so much for its high energy consumption, but for the low price of electricity. The problem can be resolved by hiking the price coupled with a series of restrictions, he said at the Gaidar Forum at RANEPA.

According to him, for about five years, Russia has not seen any increase in energy efficiency, because there has been no economic growth since 2014. While the whole world is increasing energy efficiency, we remain in the same place, the architect of the 1990s privatization said. At the same time, the energy cost remains low in Russia.

“This happens for two reasons: the ruble’s devaluation and the power generation industry reform that created a competitive electricity market, so naturally the price of electricity went down. The low price of electricity is equal to energy waste,” said Chubais, who headed the state energy company RAO UES until 2008.

In this regard, he proposed two ways to solve the problem, each of them ‘painful.’ The first is to raise prices: rich consumers should pay more, while the low income users ‘remain at the same level.’ However, Chubais did not specify the brackets for the rich and the poor. The second way is to impose limitations (apparently, on energy consumption).

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