The Ministry of Energy and Industry of the Kyrgyz Republic has developed a Program for Energy Conservation and Planning of Energy Efficiency Policy in the Kyrgyz Republic for 2015-2017. The program is a strategic document that provides a comprehensive set of mechanisms for state governance to effectively and rationally use energy resources, will allow for economical and rational use of public funds allocated for paying for utilities, and for subsidizing budget funds for the population receiving thermal energy. It will also enable monitoring and control over the implementation of energy conservation and energy efficiency measures.
Collectively, all the above-mentioned measures are aimed at gradually reducing the deficit of electricity and power in the sectors of the country’s economy, and in the long term – towards establishing sustainable low-carbon development. The program includes a plan of activities scheduled for implementation until 2017, but during monitoring, it is planned to expand these activities and include them in a long-term Plan for Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency until 2025. The Ministry of Industry and Energy held the Third Meeting of the Interagency Technical Working Group on Updating the NSES and Preparing the NSWEI of the Kyrgyz Republic. The focus of the meeting was the analysis of the implementation of National Energy Conservation and Efficiency Policy. “Balancing supply and demand in the energy sector on an environmentally sustainable basis and without harming economic growth is becoming one of the main challenges in the context of global warming and the need to reduce atmospheric emissions. The task is to find a compromise that takes into account various existing priorities and to develop broad consensus on how society should change the nature of energy supply and energy use,” said the head of the Central Asia Sustainable Energy Program of the European Union (CASEP), Paata Jenelidze. “Therefore, CASEP helped the Ministry of Energy of the Kyrgyz Republic create a ‘platform’ and attract international and local experts in the field of energy conservation and energy efficiency to discuss the current status of previously implemented pilot projects in energy efficiency and energy conservation, discuss the causes and main barriers to advancing energy conservation and energy efficiency policies, and ultimately develop the National Energy Efficiency Program (NPEE).” To date, according to CASEP representative Ilze Purina, significant work has been carried out with CASEP’s support. Working groups have been established within ministries, agencies, fuel and energy companies, and city mayors with the participation of experts from GEF/UNDP, ED “BIOM,” and regional focal points. A Technical Secretariat for Energy Conservation and Efficiency and Renewable Energy has been created at the KNTS “Energy.” A Plan of measures for the development of the NPEE and a Strategy for Renewable Energy Sources have been developed. However, in her opinion, work is being hampered by the passive attitude of the country’s government agencies. Thus, to this day, there is no single state body promoting energy conservation and efficiency policy. Moreover, the Law on Alternative Energy Sources, adopted three years ago, has remained only a declaration of intent. The NPEE identified three priorities for the development of energy conservation in the country by 2017. These include ensuring: 1) a volume of energy savings up to 1.2 million tons of conditional fuel through quality organizational and managerial support for the process of energy conservation development in the country; 2) a volume of energy savings up to 0.7 million tons of conditional fuel through stimulation of the development and use of energy- and gas-efficient technical means, technologies, and materials in energy and gas production, transmission, and consumption; 3) a volume of energy savings up to 1.0 million tons of conditional fuel through structural restructuring of the economy and halving the energy intensity and electricity intensity of GDP by 2017. The priorities have been outlined, but the problems of developing renewable energy sources remain unresolved. The head of the Energy Conservation and Efficiency Laboratory of the KNTS “Energy,” Gulsara Kasymova, voiced the general problems of the country regarding renewable energy sources. Among the main barriers to solving these issues is financing the energy-saving policy. This means that it is necessary to improve the regulatory legal framework, reduce the energy intensity of the economy, and change the existing structure of energy resource consumption across all sectors of the economy of the Kyrgyz Republic (industry, agriculture, housing and communal services, construction, budgetary organizations). Here, already established activities and implemented and completed pilot projects in energy efficiency and energy conservation can help. Participants learned about the main opportunities for increasing the energy efficiency of the economy from the proposals to the NPEE based on the examples of ED “BIOM” and OJSC “OshElectro.” Thus, OJSC “OshElectro” developed a Plan of practical measures to achieve the aforementioned goals and priorities, indicating the expected results from their implementation and deadlines for their completion. These relate to reducing the level of commercial and technical losses to approved norms, implementing a tariff system that stimulates energy conservation in the energy sector; ensuring full accounting of energy in 2015 through 100% equipping all economic entities with modern accounting devices; ensuring a 100% level of collection of funds in the energy sector; and saving electricity through explanatory work with electricity consumers. ED “BIOM” has been working for many years to improve energy conservation policy. As a practical example of implementing energy-saving measures to improve the social sphere, the experience of the ED “BIOM” project “Energy Efficiency for a Sustainable Future” of the Clean Energy Program, which is being implemented in pilot schools, was presented. The participants of the meeting unanimously proposed to consider the project experience in the context of implementing the Energy Conservation Program and planning the energy efficiency policy in the Kyrgyz Republic for 2015-2017.
