Russia's Energy Ministry working on mechanism to stimulate investment in electricity sector - deputy minister

MOSCOW. Sept 29 (Interfax) - Russia's Energy Ministry is working out a mechanism to stimulate investment in the country's electricity sector, Deputy Energy Minister Yevgeny Grabchak told reporters on the sidelines of World Atomic Week.

"A big pool of changes to legislation is actually being worked out right now, a bill to stimulate investment in the electricity sector. One of the approaches is indirect and advance financing in order to reduce the general debt burden in light of the not very comfortable current interest rates," Grabchak said.

The Russian government approved a general plan for the deployment of electric power infrastructure to 2042 at the beginning of 2025 that projects the launch of almost 88.48 GW of generating capacity. Nuclear power plants' share of total power generation is expected to grow to 24% in 2042 from the current 18.9% and the share of renewable energy is projected to increase to 3.3% from 0.8%, while the share of thermal power plants is expected to shrink to 57.4% from 62.7%.

Russia now has several mechanisms for financing projects in the electricity sector with payments from large industrial consumers. Projects to build and modernize thermal power plants, projects in energy poor parts of southern Russia and Siberia, renewable energy projects and a number of new generating units at Rosatom nuclear power plants in Russia are being financed this way.

"There should, after all, be a national project in the electricity sector, because of the amount we need to do...build 88 GW of new generation and modernize 66 GW, plus a huge number of grids," Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said earlier.