Today within the framework of the 11th Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum E.ON Russia held the round table "Prospects for the Development of the Electric Power Industry". Maksim Shirokov, the Company CEO, was acting as the event moderator.
Vyacheslav Kravchenko, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, Maksim Bystrov, acting Chairman of the Management Board of NP Market Council, Aleksandr Chuvaev, Executive Vice-President of Fortum, Enrico Viale, General Director of Enel OGK-5 and heads of other power companies participated in the round table work.
Vital topics of further development of the industry were discussed during the event. "The Government plans to liberalize the electricity wholesale market, to bring the internal prices for natural gas to the level of the equal profitability with export supplies and to sign capacity supply contracts were the key incentives to attract investments in construction of the new high technology generating capacities in the course of the Russian power system reformation. Today we receive signals of the regulatory bodies' intentions to introduce changes that considerably aggravate the investors' position", Maksim Shirokov, CEO of E.ON Russia, pointed out.
Within the framework of the session it was noted that further investment in the electric power industry is only possible subject to absolute clarity in the issues on the future of the CSC projects, tariff regulation principles, market model improvement and approaches to aging equipment modernization.
The generators also supported the proposal to introduce the old equipment decommissioning mechanism. "It is possible to assign the "forced generator" status only through the facility decommissioning procedure and to completely reject them under heat supply conditions", Maksim Shirokov said.
In addition, the issue on compliance with the payment discipline by the electricity and capacity market participants was discussed, as it has direct impact on carrying out of current activities and performance of companies' investment programs. Chronic non-payments for the supplied electricity and capacity by the buyers of the North Caucasus and other depressive regions is one of the key problems that power companies faced during their work at the Russian power market.
Upon closure of the event, the round table participants noted that the industry needed structural reforms, transition from manual management to system one, as well as the regulatory environment stability and investment climate improvement.