Translated material
The dark side of Moscow
City Hall will save electricity without Moscow City Duma deputies
Formally, deputies of the Moscow City Duma, who are now on vacation, yesterday reminded voters of their existence during a meeting of the city government. In the absence of fellow vacationer Yuri Luzhkov, United Russia members from the capital's parliament stated that they did not intend to unconditionally accept all the bills being passed from the mayor's office. The dissatisfaction of the deputies, in particular, was caused by the target energy saving program in Moscow for 2009-2013 discussed by officials yesterday, which the head of the capital's fuel and energy department, Evgeny Sklyarov, proposed to approve and submit for approval to the Moscow City Duma.Legislators considered that the document, which provides for the allocation of significant budget funds for various energy-saving measures in industry and the public sector, requires improvement. Chairman of the Budget Commission of the Moscow City Duma Igor Antonov said that it is premature to consider the bill, since it raises a lot of questions, including those related to the reporting of program implementers for the money spent.
Since everyone was asked to save (both ordinary Muscovites, enterprises, and energy workers) and save everything (water, gas, heat), the energy saving program really turned out to be quite expensive. Taking into account the attraction of non-state investments, its developers valued the 5-year program at more than 180 billion rubles. For example, in the housing and communal services sector, a large-scale energy inspection and certification of houses, the installation of heat energy meters in residential buildings, the introduction of a two-rate heat tariff for all consumers, and the replacement of incandescent lamps with energy-saving ones are planned. Industrialists were promised multimillion-dollar subsidies for the installation of energy-saving equipment and the development of energy-saving technologies. The issue of replacing backlit road signs and indicators with analogues coated with special luminous paint is being discussed. Considerable funds are expected to be spent on promoting an energy-saving lifestyle among Muscovites, including even schoolchildren, for whom special training courses are planned to be introduced. At the same time, Mr. Sklyarov assured that already in 2011 “the profitability of the program will be positive,” and two years later the return on energy-saving measures will be about 100 billion rubles. and will provide savings of 15.9 billion kilowatt-hours.
The head of the fuel and energy department was generally supported by the head of the department of economic policy and city development, Marina Ogloblina. She saw in the program broad prospects for developing a competitive environment in the city by reducing the energy component in the cost of a wide variety of products produced in Moscow. In addition, Ms. Ogloblina believes that significant savings in kilowatt-hours will allow the capital to ensure an increase in electricity without additional production or purchases on the foreign market, and at the same time reduce consumption of gas that is constantly increasing in price. “5% of the energy savings of industrial enterprises gives 1% of the growth of the city’s gross product,” she shared her calculations with her colleagues.
It turned out that the capital’s officials are not at all interested in energy saving and many are ready to contribute to the program. For example, the head of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, Leonid Bochin, proposed to consider at the same time the issue of installing an automated light switching system in each entrance so that light bulbs, even energy-saving ones, do not burn in vain. Separately, Mr. Bochin went through the arrangement of numerous advertising structures, illuminated, in his opinion, too wastefully.
At the same time, some officials, as well as deputies, felt that the five-year energy saving program required improvement. “We cannot accept the program in its original form,” admitted the head of the complex of economic policy and city development, Yuri Roslyak. But only because of the details and questions from legislators, which Mr. Antonov did not list at the meeting, officials did not abandon the already outlined plans. First Deputy Mayor Vladimir Resin, who chaired the government meeting, noted that energy saving is discussed by the city government every year, but now there is an opportunity “to have concrete results and know how much money we will save, for example, during major repairs.” Therefore, at the suggestion of Mr. Roslyak, the leaders of the capital’s government decided not to contact the Moscow City Duma with a long-term energy saving strategy, but to quickly finalize the document presented by Evgeny Sklyarov into a three-year program and approve it independently. The five-year program, as well as the energy-saving strategy, will, apparently, be considered by officials already in 2009, since the capital's United Russia members themselves voted in March to renounce their authority to endorse long-term targeted programs of the mayor's office from January next year.