Today one of the most relevant for any economyis the problem of energy. More than half of the countries in the world, consumed energy imports. This makes the economy of countries energy dependent. In addition, this explains the structure of production costs. Rising prices for energy resources require significant costs for their acquisition and aggravate the economic situation as a whole. For countries that do not have the required amount of energy resources, and the possibilities of attracting their renewal are extremely limited, increasing energy efficiency becomes the most important vector of the economic movement. Energy efficiency, reducing the cost of production of electric power products, are becoming an important factor in economic growth.
There are two strategic directions of itsincrease. The first is to reduce the cost of production by increasing the efficiency of the consumption of resources at thermal power plants and in boilers for the production of electric heat. The second is an increase in the energy efficiency of the entire industry and agriculture.
To assess what the production costsproducts in the electric power industry, what is the efficiency of energy production at thermal power plants using such an indicator as the calculated specific consumption of fuel used per unit of energy supplied. This indicator is used to compare the efficiency, efficiency of various power plants. For example, for thermal stations with subcritical steam parameters, specific consumption is 365 g of reference fuel / kWh, with supercritical parameters - 320 g of reference fuel / kWh, for modern combined-cycle stations - 265 g of equivalent fuel / kWh. For electrical networks, energy efficiency is determined by the amount of electricity losses in the networks, which is currently about 11% of the energy supplied to the grid and can be expressed by the efficiency of transmission and distribution of electricity. The energy efficiency of heating networks is determined in a similar way, with losses of approximately 12%.
For the power system as a whole does not existany universal criterion, what should be the cost of production in the power industry, which one to apply the energy efficiency indicator that characterizes the efficiency of using the supplied primary energy that this type of fuel contains. It seems that for this purpose the indicator of specific fuel consumption for all power plants, attributable to energy released to consumers, can be used.
There is a direct relationship between growth rates.energy intensity and rate of electricity consumption and GDP. It follows from it that the dynamics of changes in the energy intensity of the gross product are determined both by the rates and growth of the use of energy resources, and by the rates of economic development of the economy. If the growth rate of energy consumption is ahead of the growth rate of GDP, then the cost of producing products in the power industry grows, energy consumption increases, and if the ratio is inverse, then energy intensity decreases.
Thus, to ensure growthThe energy efficiency of the economy requires that the pace of economic development, expressed in GDP growth, be faster than the growth rate of energy consumption. Two contradictory trends in the dynamics of energy consumption should be noted. On the one hand, the increase in the energy intensity of labor as an important factor in increasing its productivity, on the other - the reduction of energy intensity as a result of the energy efficiency policy.
