Aleksei Eresko, Deputy Minister of Construction and Housing of RF, Sergey Kropachev, Vice-Governor of Saint Petersburg, Evgeny Razumishkin, Vice-Governor of Saint Petersburg, Dmitry Nikitin, General Director of RESTEC Exhibition Association, and Sergey Voronkov, General Director of ExpoForum International, officially started the XII Russian International Energy Forum as part of the opening ceremony of industry events, that are held simultaneously at the venue of ExpoForum, that is the International Exhibition-Convention «Rustproofing» and the International Exhibition «Housing and Communal Services of Russia». Aleksei Eresko pointed out that the ExpoForum venue features important industries that influence the life quality of the Russian citizens. Sergey Voronkov stated that the primary task of the organizers is to make the Russian International Energy Forum a showcase of new achievements. «This is a meeting point to discuss new trends and our achievements, to address the issues related to the future, work with the youth», noted Sergey Voronkov.

In the course of the official opening ceremony of RIEF-2024, its visitors and participants were able to see the exhibition «Power Engineering Heroes of Blockaded Leningrad», for which Soviet top secrets were disclosed. The project was implemented by ExpoForum International in cooperation with the Government of Saint Petersburg. The exposition talked about the work of the blockaded Leningrad power engineers who provided for the power supply of the city under siege and revealed the history of creating the Leningrad power system in the pre-war years and of its restoring after the war. 

Multiple new products and developments for the national energy industry were presented by Russian industrialists at the Specialized Exhibition «Energy and Electrical Engineering». The visitors could see a domestic calibration and electrotechnical equipment, stocking systems, generation equipment, heat exchangers, accumulator storage batteries, electric meters, automation and communication systems, sensors and controllers, that successfully replace popular former foreign analogues and are highly demanded by Russian power engineers at the energy complex facilities. For instance, Prosoft-Systems has presented a electric power facilities automation system that makes it possible to monitor what is happening at a site: real parameters, currents, voltages and temperatures are reflected. The representatives of PLC Technology have installed the stands with the cable lines monitoring system, a digital sub-station stand, and have demonstrated new rack-mounted ironwork commutators with an enhanced data transmission rate. Matrix company demonstrated a system solution that enables to monitor all metering devices powered by substation, and a modified line of smart energy meters. Radar MMS has brought to the Exhibition an unmanned aircraft BVS VT-45 with a capacity of 10 kg, that enables to carry out monitoring, geological exploration, search and rescue operations. The Chelyabinsk plant Polymer-Ural showed heat-proof multilayer pipes made of unique polymer materials having protection from mechanical damages, and Spetskabel Plant presented a mounting cable of increased flexibility for the robot engineering.

An interest in the Exhibition shown by enterprises from Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian countries is also indicative of the vast prospects of the Russian electrical energy engineering market.

The RIEF-2024 venue hosted a collective stand of industrial enterprise of Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province, where 20 enterprises of the province leading industries - mechanical engineering, automobile industry, as well as the largest trade and logistic companies were presented.

«RIEF-2024 features the new international economic landscape. Apart from the Russian companies, the companies from 11 countries, including China, Turkey, India, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, are performing here. It is quite clear today that it is impossible to isolate Russia: it is only Russia, China and India provide for the aggregate market of nearly 3 billion people! With due account of human, production, technological, energy and other resources of Russia and China this market is absolutely self-sufficient and does not need anyone else. That’s why the territory of the RIEF-2024 is a place of optimism!», underlined Sergey Voronkov.

The key event of the XII Russian International Energy Forum was the Plenary Session «Development of the Russian Energy Развитие In the Modern Context. New Challenges: Internal and External» that was held in the discussion format. Its participants discussed the relevant issues of the country’s energy industry current state, associated with its investment attractiveness and import substitution, switching to renewables and improving the tariff policy. 

As was noted by Konstantin Simonov, General Director of the National Energy Security Fund, the global issues of the Russian energy development are also related to investments. Here, the power engineers are waiting for the state support. 

According to Vladimir Tupikin, the Director for Energy and Resource Provision of SIBUR Holding PJSC, a member of the Supervisory Board of «Non-Profit Partnership market Council» Association, a member of the Government Commission for Electric Energy Industry Development, to date, 45% of the Russian generation fleet are the Soviet inheritance that needs not to be just upgraded but to be fully replaced due to the extreme wear and tear of equipment. «By 2050, we should replace the power equipment fleet with the total capacity of 90 GW, and not only due to gas turbines, but also using the steam-power blocks», Vladimir Tupikin noted. Funding is the key issue here, as replacement of 90 GW will require 30 trillion rubles of investments.

Aleksei Zhikharev, Director of the Association for Development of Renewable Power Engineering, General Director of Ensolve, stated that renewable energy sources, like wind and sun, may become an alternative to the traditional generation, especially in the Far East. «This region may provide good opportunities for the young developing industry to demonstrate its solvency», Aleksei Zhikharev is sure.

The Plenary Session participants pointed out that the development of the electric energy engineering is impeded by the tariff policy imperfection. One of such stumbling blocks is a cross-subsidy, when responsibility for payment of a part of the electric power consumed by population is shifted to the industry. This problem is more than a dozen years, but it is inexpedient to raise tariffs for the population, thinks Boris Gladkikh, the State Duma deputy, a member of the State Duma Energy Committee. «A consumer should understand clearly the meaning of tariff increase, and not percept it as an inevitably growing load on the family budget», the deputy explained. In his opinion, one should start this work from establishing standard energy resources consumption rates for households, by regions on a case-by-case basis. The cross-subsidy issue is further escalated, though «in our region it is not so acute so far», agrees Igor Kuzmin, General Director of Rosseti Lenenergo PJSC.

An important event of the RIEF-2024 convention program was the round-table discussion «Relevant Tasks and Tools for Ensuring Energy Safety and Anti-Terrorist Security of FEC Facilities. Reliability and Accessibility of Energy Infrastructure». The participants have discussed FEC security issues, spoke about supervisory activities in power engineering in the context of regulatory changes and consolidation of the network assets as a factor of reliability and accessibility of the energy infrastructure.

One of the most topical issues in the electric energy sector, the efficiency of cross-subsidy, was raised by the participants of the session «Differential Tariffs in Electric Energy: Risks and Opportunities». The experts have presented the review of the tariff campaign results in the Russian regions and talked about the practical mechanisms to lower the cross-subsidy scopes enabling to preserve discounted tariffs for those who really need them.

On the days when the industrial projects were held, the Business Networking Centre was operating on the ExpoForum venue, during which more than 1,700 meetings between the suppliers and the customers took place. Within the framework of RIEF-2024, individual meetings were held by representatives of Gazprom Neft, Rosneft, RZD, Vodokanal of St. Petersburg, LOESK, OGK-2, Power Machines, Mosoblgaz and other organizations and institutions.

Simultaneously with the Russian International Energy Forum, the ExpoForum hosted the International Exhibition-Convention «Rustproofing» and the International Exhibition «Housing and Communal Services of Russia». Due to parallel holding of three large-scale events, the experts from different economy areas were able to meet at the same platform for the maximum effective exchange of experience on the issues of conducting business in the essential industry branches of Russia. 

RIEF-2024 was held with the support of the Government of Saint Petersburg.

The project partners are PLC Technology and Science and Production Company Morsvyazavtomatika.

The general media partner is the newspaper Power and Industry of Russia. The general industry media partner is the online portal Neftegaz.ru. The official media partner is the electrotechnical internet portal Elec.ru. The official industry media partner is the social and business scientific journal «Energy Policy». The strategic media partner is Camelot Publishing.

The event organizer is ExpoForum International.