Pres to discuss energy efficiency in economy at State Council

MOSCOW, July 2 (Itar-Tass) - President Dmitry Medvedev will call on
Thursday a visiting enlarged meeting of the State Council presidium. It
will deal with raising energy efficiency of the Russian economy. The head
of state said earlier that he hoped that this work would lead to issuing
legislative acts in this sphere.
"I shall call a meeting of the State Council presidium on energy
efficiency in the near future; I hope that this will result in taking a
law and by-laws on this topic," the president said at one of meetings last
May. "As for the bill, as I understand, it is now being readied for the
second reading. Of course it will be approved," Medvedev said at that time.
Incidentally, the Russian chief executive again turned to the problem
of energy efficiency a month later. Speaking at a meeting of the
Commission on Modernisation and Technological Development of the Russian
Economy in mid-June, he censured the government that there is no headway
in this sphere.
"The situation is very bad, for the time being, in the country with
the problem of energy efficiency: there is only idle talk on this topic,
and there is no progress," he noted. Incidentally, even the crisis, on
which we pinned, has not helped at all: nobody is busied with energy
efficiency," the president regretted.
"We shall not make any breakthrough without settling this systemic
problem either in cutting expenses, or in raising labour productivity, or
still in higher competitiveness of any of our goods, let it be even the
most highly technological," Medvedev emphasised.
The president pointed to boosting energy efficiency in housing and
communal services among possible top priority areas of work, which is to
arrest a rise in prices for appropriate services in this sphere. "Only in
this case, the project of energy efficiency will start working in real
fact rather than on paper," he claimed.
-0-bur