New Norwegian-Russian energy efficiency project

Russia puts the issues of energy efficiency and energy saving in the first line of the state development and modernization of national economy. The Federal authorities are going to invest 10 trillion rubles in the development of national energy efficiency program till 2020 year. Before this autumn all Russian regions had to work out own energy efficiency programs and the best of them as it was announced will get 17 billion rubles of federal co-financing during the next three years. The President Medvedev nevertheless noted a bad quality of the regional energy efficiency programs which is evidently caused by a lack of competence and modern technologies in this field in Russia. International cooperation is obviously one of the tools which Russia is going to use more and more active in order to overcome this technological gap. Signing of memorandums on cooperation in energy efficiency and renewable energy is currently an important part of almost all state visits of President Medvedev to foreign countries. Such memorandum was signed with in the end of April during his visit to Oslo.

The interregional and cross-border cooperation possess a great potential and offer big possibilities for competence exchange in this field. Thus, during the September visit of the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas gar Store to Arkhangelsk the Governor of this region Ilia Mikhalchuk stressed that the energy efficiency issues should be the mostly prioritized in the future development of cooperation between Arkhangelsk oblast and Norway. Also in September the Norwegian-Russian Chamber of Commerce (NRCC) came up with the initiative to start a new project bringing Norwegian energy efficiency technologies and competence in the Russian part of the Barents Region.

Last week was marked by first serious steps in realization of these initiatives. The Norwegian-Russian round table meeting on energy efficiency was held in Arkhangelsk on Tuesday. The meeting was timed to the session of Norwegian-Russian working group on cross-border cooperation and opened by the State Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of trade and industry Rikke Lind and the Deputy Minister of the Russian Ministry of regional development Maksim Travnikov. During the round table meeting the local energy companies and Arkhangelsk regional authorities presented the prioritized direction of regional energy efficiency program and a number of projects which can be realized in cooperation with Norwegian partners. From the Norwegian side the meeting was participated by the General Consul of Norway in Murmansk Jon Elvedal Fredriksen, the managing director of NRCC Jarle Forbord and the representatives of Norwegian companies Innovation Norway, ENSI, Ramboll Barents.

On Friday last week the NRCC project manager Jorn Tverseth and the managing director of Norsec Esave company Kjell Kruger announced in Arkhangelsk a start of new project that should demonstrate the Norwegian energy efficiency competence and technologies in practice. The project which is partly funded by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat also involves other Norwegian participants specializing in energy monitoring and energy audit: Narvik Science park, Troms Kraft Energy Service, Enerconsult and Flex Kontrol. The project owners are going to install Norwegian equipment in the Park Inn hotel in Murmansk and Petrovsky Shopping center in Arkhangelsk and to test how efficiently the energy is used in these companies. Later on the experts will offer their advices on optimization of energy supply. Also the Norwegian experts will arrange the energy efficiency seminars in Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Syktyvkar and Narjan-Mar. At the moment the Norwegian specialists have completed first study of existing energy systems in two Russian companies and now are preparing to install the equipment for energy monitoring. First rough calculations showed that the companies can save up to 30% of energy consumption. The project ultimate results will be presented in September next year.