Russia is the fourth largest generator of electricity, behind the US, China, and Japan.  The system has a total electric generation capacity of about 228.7 gigawatts (GW), and in 2008 generated approximately 1,036 TWh of electric power. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, electricity generation showed both a dramatic decline, (down 31 percent between 1990 and 1998), followed by a gradual recovery (up 25 percent between 1998 and 2008), showing almost a full recovery over the last decade. Similar to patterns in oil, natural gas, and coal, the economic slowdown which followed the Soviet Union's collapse also stunted electricity generation.  Russia does not consume all of its electricity production and is a net exporter of electricity.  Electricity demand within Russia decreases or increases largely as a function of its economic condition.

Roughly 68 percent of Russia’s generation capacity is thermal plants, 21 percent hydro, 10 percent nuclear, and 1 percent from renewables such as wind and geothermal, and waste heat.  About 16% of actual generation is from hydro, and 16% of it is from nuclear. A few generators in the far-eastern part of the country are not connected to the power grid.  Russia was the first country to have an operating nuclear energy plant, and currently has 31 nuclear plants operating, with almost 22 GW of capacity.  Half of the operating nuclear reactors are based on the same design as the Chernobyl plant, and many of the plants are nearing the end of their rated working lifetimes.  However, Russia has plans to double nuclear output by 2020 and has over 8.7 GW of nuclear currently under construction, and an additional 28 GW planned.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, Russia has seen severe recession and economic boom in the space of a decade. The industrial landscape has changed significantly with the advent of competition, and extensive foreign investment. This changed has reached the energy sector, with restructuring efforts underway to privatize the industry, and pave the way for open wholesale electric competition. Efforts are also underway to integrate Russia’s energy grid with that of Western Europe.

Despite the progress, the electric sector faces many of the same challenges as other eastern European countries, including uneconomic tariff structures, non-payment, and aging electric systems.

Russia’s unique situation with its vast natural resources and its underdeveloped economy make it the world’s leading energy exporter.  Russia has the world’s largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves.  Russia’s exports make up an estimated 80% of Russia’s foreign trade earnings.  It is a major supplier to the European Union, countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as to China, Poland, Turkey and Finland.  In country prices of energy are even lower than export prices.  This has led to slow development of renewables, despite equally vast renewable resources.

Russia has some of the largest reserves of coal and natural gas in the world, leading to a low cost of energy and creating a challenging environment for the development of renewables. However, Russia also has great potential of renewable energy sources, largely due to its size and range of geographic features. The renewable potential is especially applicable in some of the more remote parts of Russia that are not connected to the grid. Transportation of fuel from energy rich portions of the country to these remote sectors can significantly increase the cost of fuel and energy. As a result, some remote territories spend more than half their budgets on fuel. Geothermal resources in the Far East or North Caucasus, or hydro from the many watersheds, or other renewables such as wind and solar energy could potentially serve remote populations and provide energy at competitive prices on the grid.

With some 10 million people not connected to the electricity grid, Russia also has huge potential markets for off-grid electricity systems based on renewable energy. In many isolated settlements, renewables can be the most economic, and perhaps even the only way to provide electricity and heat to consumers.

Russia Country Summary Table

The following figure displays the estimated power generation for the Russian Federation until the year 2020.

Electricity Development

(Source: Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation)

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Russia’s energy policy is mostly outlined in a document created in 2003 which plans out to 2020.  Over the last decade, significant steps in an on-going privatization and de-monopolization process have taken place in the Russian energy sector. A key element of these reforms is the introduction of cost-based pricing. In particular, major progress has been made in the electricity sector reform process with the adoption of a package of laws in 2003.

Reform in other energy markets is also underway, though its pace differs from sector to sector. Domestic prices of oil and oil products are already close to international levels. Domestic gas prices, which are still much lower than export prices, are gradually rising and are expected to reach international levels in the future. Then, as the existing energy infrastructure expands, comparisons among different fuel sources and technologies will favor those renewable energy technologies that are currently competitive in many market applications.

Generally Russia has lacked policy in support of renewables.  In January, 2009, Russia’s energy policy included a mandate to increase energy from renewables to 4.5%, up from less than 1%, by the year 2020.  In an energy system as large as Russia’s, this signifies a major increase in renewables, and would require an additional 22 GW of new renewables generation.  Russia has also set targets to double nuclear production by 2020.

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In the 1930s Russia was the first in the world to start constructing utility-scale wind turbines.  Studies of the wind potential were also done many years ago.  However, due to financial difficulty and lack of policy, in the last several years development of the wind power industry has been slow.  Currently, Russia only has a little over 20 MW of wind and new hasn’t been built since 2002.  More recently, the wind power industry in Russia has started gaining a little bit of traction.  In 2008 the first wind turbine became grid connected in Murmansk.  This pilot project is important because to the lack of policy that supports renewables, wind projects often have difficulty getting connected to the grid.  Grid companies hesitate to connect renewables due to their intermittency.   Plans to build a large-scale wind farm in the same region have also started.

The option of grid-connected wind power production may benefit from the existence of the unique extensive UPS. At the same time stand-alone wind power systems might be promising in the remote mountain and coastal regions which have large wind potential and are not connected to a grid. Western experience, policy, research, and technologies could act as a catalyst to accelerate the introduction of wind energy.

Russia is one of the largest countries in the world and is situated in different climatic zones, which result in high wind energy potential. Mostly the highest wind energy potential is concentrated along Russia Federation seacoasts, in the vast territories of steppes and in the mountains.   The regions most favorable for wind energy use include the North of Russia and Far East. 

According to the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in 1989 all the research and design works in the renewable energy technologies were united on the State Scientific and Technological program Ecologically Clean Energy. The program included development of various wind turbine models 0.25 - 1'250 kW. Later the 30 kW and 1,250 kW models were abandoned due to lack of financing. The leading R&D organizations in the program were Vetroen and Yuzhnoe (both Science Production Associations), Hydroproject (Scientific Research Institute), Raduga (Design Office) and Energobalance-SoVENA.

Over most of Russia, wind speeds are greater in the daytime than at night, although this variation is much less pronounced in the winter. The annual variation in mean wind speed (i.e. the difference between the maximum and minimum mean daily speeds) is insignificant for most parts of Russia.

Several attempts have been made to estimate the exact potential of wind energy in Russia, beginning with the Wind Atlas published in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. More recently, have estimated gross wind potential at 26,000 million tones of coal equivalent, technical potential at 2,000 mtce, and economic potential at 10 mtce. According to analysis, about 30 percent of the economic potential of wind development is concentrated in the Far East, about 16 percent in West Siberia and another 16 percent in East Siberia.

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Russia has about 22 percent of the world’s forests located on its territory.  Forests cover about 40 percent of the entire landmass, with the current annual allowable cut of 542 million m3.  The largest forests are in the Siberian taiga, the Far East and the northern European territories. The forest industry is important for the Russian economy, and it is a large potential supplier and consumer of biomass (wood waste) products. At present, these products are only being minimally exploited. The technical potential of biomass is estimated at more than 50 Mtce. 

The agricultural sector is also important in Russia, accounting for 8 percent of GDP, and employing 11 percent of the labor force.  It is also an important source of biomass resources.  Still, the vast majority of Russia’s agricultural resources are not being used at all.  An estimated 850 million liters of biofuel could be produced on this land, although currently there is only one biofuel plant in the country. 

Russia Solar Direct Normal Insolation (Source: NASA)

Russia Solar Global Horizontal Irradiance (Source: NASA)

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Russia possesses vast geothermal resources, and over 3,000 wells have been drilled to take advantage. At present the geothermal energy is used in Russian Federation both for heat supply and electricity production.  Their first two geothermal power plants were operating in 1966, and they were the first to use the single-flash binary cycle design.

In Russia, almost half of energy use goes toward heating.  Direct use of geothermal can offer significant resource to provide this energy, potentially up to 30% (IGA, 2005), and this has been the predominant use of geothermal energy in Russia.  Direct utilization of thermal water with temperature 30–100 °C for heating and hot water supply of buildings, for agricultural needs (heating of green houses and cattle raising farms), for fish breeding, in local industry, in balneology and for swimming pools takes place mainly at the Northern Caucasia (Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories, Republic Dagestan, Adygei Region, Karachai-Cherkessia) an at Far East (peninsula Kamchatka, Kuriles). Locally the thermal water is also used in the separate settlements of Western Siberia, near Lake Baikal, in Magadan and Chukot regions and at Sakhalin. Even within Lake Baikal, geothermal heat has been noticed to be breaking through thick ice in two specific locations, despite the depth of the lake.  At Kamchatka there are the experimental plants for using thermal water in combination with heat pumps.

Use of geothermal to produce electrical power in Russia is also significant, and has been growing continuously.  There are currently somewhere between 92-129 MW of geothermal power plants operating, and about 55 MW of planned additional capacity (UDI, June 2009 and EBRD Project database).

According to the Institute of Volcanology, Far East branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, the geothermal resources near Kamchatka are good enough to fully supply it with electric power and heat for more than 100 years. Besides the high temperature Mutnovskoe field with capacity of 300 MW(e) located in the south of Kamchatka, there are known rich geothermal resources at Koshelevskoe, Bolshe Bannoe and Kireunskoe (in the north) fields. In total these fields may produce about 2,000 MW(e).

The heat potential of Kamchatka’s geothermal waters is estimated at 5,000 MW(therm). Also at Chukotka there are significant geothermal resources, part of which has been already discovered and may be effectively used for supplying power to nearby cities and settlements.  The Kuril Islands are rich in geothermal resources as well. They can produce enough electric and thermal power to supply the region for 100-200 years.

The Iturup island features newly discovered biphase heat-transfer fluid resources the capacity of which 30 MWe is enough to meet the energy needs of the whole island. The southern island Kunashir has geothermal heat reserves that are being used for electric power and heat supply of Yzhno-Kurilsk. The subsoil of the northern island Paramushir is underexplored, yet is known to contain good resources of geothermal water of 70-95°C.  The Northern Caucasus has well studied geothermal resources with temperatures ranging from 70 to 180°C °C at depths of 300 to 5000 m. Local geothermal waters are used for heat and hot water supply for a long time already.

Geothermal Map of Russia

Thermal water fields with proven resources

Proven fields of steam-water mixture and high-temperature brines

Many of these resources have already been developed or have plans for development or expansion.

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Hydropower is one of Russia’s greatest energy resources, making up about 21% of total current generating capacity, although it only accounts for about 16% of production.  Russia is currently the world’s fifth largest producer of hydropower, at about 167 TWh/yr (BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2009), and only about 18% of its hydropower potential has been developed.

Russia’s largest power plant, with a total generating capacity of over 6,400 MW, is hydroelectric.  However, this power plant suffered a major failure in 2009 destroying two of the plants ten turbines, and seriously damaged a third turbine, which will take several years to reconstruct.  Russia has numerous other large and mid-sized hydroelectric power plants, totaling over 47.6 GW in capacity.

The total hydropower technical potential in Russia is estimated to be about 2,400 billion kWh per year, the majority of which is based on medium and large rivers. The economic potential for this resource is about 850 billion kWh per year. There is also significant hydro potential on the smaller rivers in Russia.

Most of the potential hydropower resources are located in Central and Eastern Siberia and in the Far East. The North Caucasus and the western part of the Urals also have good hydropower potential. The Far East and Eastern Siberia combined account for more than 80 percent of hydropower potential, and could produce about 450-600 billion kWh per year.