Novelties of new Belarusian energy conservation program explained

The program has been worked out to inhibit the gross growth of consumption of fuel and energy resources, bring Belarus' GDP energy intensity closer to the world's average, and make as many domestic fuel and energy resources as possible part of the country's fuel mix, including renewable sources of energy.

Efforts to reduce the GDP's energy intensity and increase energy generation from renewable sources of energy will be exercised as part of the program.
Strategic energy conservation goals for the period till 2025 include:

• reducing the GDP energy intensity by at least 7% in comparison with 2020 with the GDP growth rate at 121.5% in 2021-2025
• increasing the share of local fuel and energy resources in the overall consumption to at least 16.5%
• electricity generation by the NPP will also help the country's achieve standard energy self-sufficiency

The program contains 2 subprograms that focus on ways to increase energy effectiveness and on efforts to encourage the use of local fuel and energy resources, incl. renewable energy sources.
The key goals of the subprograms is:

• to save fuel and energy resources to the tune of 2.5-3 million tonnes of reference fuel
• to increase the share of renewable sources of energy to at least 8% in 2025

The main measures designed to reach these goals and hit the targets include:

• the implementation of a set of energy-saving measures by government agencies and the regions
• including within the framework of international projects
• the construction of energy sources that use local fuels, renewable sources of energy
• the introduction of an energy management system
• the annual reduction of energy intensity in manufacturing products
• providing services, including the provision of heat and electricity

The implementation of technical energy-saving measures designed to increase the consumption of electricity instead of crude hydrocarbon fuels will help achieve the same goals.
It will also be necessary to increase the usage of low-potential secondary energy resources, optimize the consumption of heating energy.

The program also provides for developing the production of electric transport and charging infrastructure.
The program will encourage the use of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles.

As part of the program about 650MW of power plants that burn wooden fuel will be commissioned in 2021-2025.
It will allow increasing the consumption of local fuel and energy resources by about 180,300 tonnes of reference fuel and respectively decrease the consumption of imported natural gas by 156.8 million m3.