Sergey Savchuk

The modern information space is so compressed and fed under such ethereal pressure that all the events taking place in the modern world merge into one endless tape, which, blurring, rushes through our consciousness. What today causes a tremendous response, the day after tomorrow will be forgotten and no one will be interested. In this flickering sequence of events, it is extremely entertaining to watch how the most passionate part of our society jumps from one "vital" topic to another.

Two months ago, all concerned citizens, tearing various items of clothing on their chests, suffered over the transfer of an old mine in Transbaikalia to Chinese mining companies. Then, it would seem that the Siberian forest entered the media arena forever, almost completely and irrevocably cut down by the Chinese.

The forest was replaced by Lake Baikal, where the same Asians pump out and bottle water in colossal volumes (in reality, on the same Baikal, the Russians simultaneously manage to build a second cluster of a neutrino telescope, which lies at the bottom and is covered with a thickness of water that seems to have already been exported to China).

At the moment, the undisputed leader in the frequency and fury of the discussion was the initiative of the Russian government to introduce social norms for electricity consumption. The topic has acquired an incredible number of rumors, tales and fantasies, limited only by the degree of dislike of the authors to "this country". Some predictably prophesy that the government will massively rob retired grandmothers and turn off the light to orphans.

What really excited the actively progressive public?

The initiative itself is not new: for the first time it was publicly discussed almost four years ago. Then (just recall) it was planned to introduce three norms of electricity consumption per household: less than 150 kilowatt-hours per month, 151-600 and more than 600 kilowatt-hours. According to the Ministry of Energy, which carefully monitors fluctuations in electricity consumption, at that time the vast majority of Russians owning real estate fell into the first category - more than 73 percent. In the second - about 25 percent, in the third - less than two. It was assumed that the first (basic and preferential) quota provides for all the needs of a conditional average household, whether it be an apartment or a private house. In this range, the price for used kilowatt-hours was minimal. When consuming within the second quota, the cost of electricity increased by 12 percent, and in the event that even 600 kilowatts is not enough for you, the price jumped immediately by 52 percent.

Such an initiative was even put into practice in seven pilot regions of our country at once. In them, for each person, a norm was set at 50-190 kilowatt-hours per month. So, for example, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the social consumption norm was introduced in general in 2005, according to which each Russian living separately could use up to 110 kilowatts without increasing the cost, and in families the norm for each member was 75 kilowatt-hours. One of the highest social norms among the pilot territories was in the Oryol region - up to 200 kilowatt-hours per household with one resident, in the city of Orel itself the norm was slightly lower - 190 kilowatts. Everyone who fell within the specified limits paid only 3.74 rubles per kilowatt-hour, while those who “ate” more had to pay 4.94 rubles.

The pilot region with one of the lowest consumption rates was the Rostov region. She was given threshold levels of 96 kilowatt-hours for the first registered person, 60 for the second, and 40 kilowatt-hours for all other family members and residents.

It must be said that in all regions that participated in the testing of this system, more than 90 percent of residents and households met the minimum quotas. Moreover, in some places, residents even noted that due to the introduction of preferential tariffing, they began to pay somewhat less. In fairness, let's say that not everything went smoothly, the owners of dilapidated housing and large families, as well as all those who heated their homes with electricity, often did not fit into the norms.

The experiment of 2013-2014 was conducted not at all with the aim of eating on the people's neck, but as part of the optimization of cross-subsidization algorithms, which is widely used in most countries of the world. Its essence is that one category of consumers pays extra for another. It's like a progressive income tax. The Russian government has repeatedly stressed that it seeks to move away from this practice as much as possible. As of today, this has not been fully achieved. This is due, in particular, to the fact that the tariffs at which the population pays for electricity are still lower than the real costs of power engineers, that is, the "arrears" cover medium and large consumers - production and industry facilities. In order not to be accused of lobbying the interests of business, let's just cite the statistics. The growth rate of electricity prices for average consumers compared to the population grew by 7.7 percent in 2017 against 6.9 percent in 2016. For large ones - by 10.5 versus 4.3 percent, respectively. At the same time, the industry is buying less and less energy: over the past three years, there has been a decline of 495 million kilowatt-hours. But the population is buying more and more, during the same period, the Russians burned seven percent more electricity, which is equal to 161 additional million kilowatt-hours.

At the beginning of 2017, the Russian Ministry of Energy estimated the minimum required amount of subsidies for this energy sector at 368 billion rubles. According to the forecast of the same ministry, if the order of household electricity consumption is not reformed, then by 2022 417 billion will be required. It was calculated that in order to bring the subsidies to the planned 89 billion, it was necessary to increase electricity tariffs by 13.9 percent a year ago. Not to certain categories of citizens, but to the whole country at once. And perform a similar increase every year. Tellingly, the government refused to do so. In 2014, this project as a whole, due to ambiguous results, was recognized as premature and not meeting the real level of income of citizens, it was curtailed and postponed until better times.

And now the summer of 2017 has arrived. The project was taken out from under the cloth, revised and sent to the relevant departments for revision and optimization. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak announced this publicly. A Sound of Thunder. Having discarded the arguments of the level of rumors on the bench, let's turn directly to the documents describing this initiative.

Let's start with the fact that, according to all official data, the new version of social norms will be softer than its predecessor, and at the same time it will have a number of differences. Firstly, now it is planned to keep consumption records not by the number of people living in the house, but by connection points (that is, by individual apartments or households). For each such point, the government proposes to set a standard consumption rate of 300 kilowatt-hours. When consumed in the range of 300-500 kilowatt-hours, electricity will be paid at an increased rate, and in case of exceeding the figure of 500 kilowatts, according to "economically justified by the manufacturer and supplier." What exactly is meant in the latter case is still unclear, because there are no detailed explanations from the relevant officials.

Secondly, the list of various preferential consumers will be significantly curtailed. For example, horticultural and horticultural partnerships, garage cooperatives, private outbuildings (sheds and cellars), religious organizations, housing at military units, places of deprivation of liberty, and a number of others will be excluded from it.

Residents of Volokolamsk near Moscow assess the quality of work of public services worst of all in Russia, follows from the results of a survey conducted by the real estate portal Domofond.ru.

The most slippery moment of the preliminary version of the reform is that it poorly takes into account the interests of the villagers, as well as all users of electric stoves. For them, the FAS proposed to introduce a 30% discount, but this initiative met with resistance from representatives of generating companies and large-scale production. For all other socially unprotected groups, a multi-level system of subsidies is expected to be introduced. Judging by the facts available today, the owners of large private houses, as well as owners of many energy-intensive appliances, especially those who like to heat their homes with electric underfloor heating, will fall under the tariff shock first of all.

According to the FAS, in 2017 one Russian used on average about 85 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. In the southern regions, for example in the Crimea, the vast majority of families fit into the norm of 150 kilowatts. The maximum consumption among the Russian regions was recorded in the Irkutsk region: there, each resident "pulls" an average of 225 kilowatts per month. Based on this, most Russian energy experts believe that the 300 kilowatt norm will completely cover all the basic needs of a family of two adults and one child (families with a large number of children in this case should fall into the category of beneficiaries).

What will be the final version of this initiative? We will see as early as January 2019 – that is when all relevant departments should submit their well-founded proposals to the Ministry of Energy.

All of the above does not mean that the initiative will ultimately not affect the vast majority of citizens. But familiarization with the preliminary plans of the government will help, at least, to understand the points that should be paid attention to. This is more productive than reposting the myths about the robbery of pensioners.