Rosatom Discusses Russia’s Progress in Renewable Energy at SPIEF 2023
16.06.2023
The session brought together industry experts from the government authorities, renewable energy market players, renewable energy equipment manufacturers, and large power consumers. They discussed which countries would be creating technology and manufacturing equipment and which countries would be buying them, what was needed to achieve technological sovereignty and stabilize prices for domestic equipment, and what industries needed to be created to reduce dependency on commodity markets.
The use of locally produced components is an inherent part of Rosatom’s development strategy. At present, Rosatom is Russia's only manufacturer of multi-megawatt wind turbines and an anchor customer for the Russian producers and suppliers of wind energy equipment and components. Local content in Rosatom’s wind turbines stands currently at 68%. Pursuant to the government programme for the support of renewable energy producers in the wholesale capacity market, Rosatom plans to raise local content in its generation facilities to 75% and continue to develop competencies and references in the wind energy sector, expanding the range of products and services and making Russian products more competitive in the global market.
“We can say with confidence by the example of Rosatom that it is possible to achieve technological sovereignty. Over the past year, we stopped neither production nor construction of generating facilities. In June, we commissioned a new wind farm, the construction of which began last May. As for the local content, we still need some fine-tuning and, possibly, raising the bar. With certain components and technologies in place, we will secure a foothold in the wind energy market, maintaining our supply and production chains and being able to operate and repair the wind farm equipment. We at Rosatom are planning to increase local content in our facilities to 80–85%,” says NovaWind CEO Grigoriy Nazarov.
“When raising the issue of technological sovereignty, it is important to understand that we should, first and foremost, possess the technology and be able to independently upgrade it and further operate the equipment. Even if Russian companies borrow some technology, they have to work on upgrading it to make it fully ours. We will definitely be able to get an advantage with our commodities and logistics. I think we have very good prospects here and surely can do it,” says Alexey Zhikharev, Director of the Russia Renewable Energy Development Association (RREDA).
“We are proud to have made a major contribution to the development of renewable energy, particularly wind farms, in our country. The main reason for us to be proud is that every wind turbine tower erected in our country in recent years has been actually produced from Severstal rolled steel. We have made a strategic decision to remain present in the sector and, moreover, to do our best to maintain and develop the competencies, personnel and technology we have acquired over the past years, and to be ready for the next round of development to the maximum extent possible. In my opinion, we can both achieve technological sovereignty and maintain low electricity prices at the same time. We are improving our competencies step by step, creating conditions for lower electricity prices and laying a solid foundation for the development of technology. I fully agree that this technology should comprise not only materials or towers but every stage of the supply and production chains,” adds Dmitry Goroshkov, Director for Energy and Infrastructure Projects at Severstal