Company management speeches

New challenges

Ivan Shevchenko, Corporative Director and member of Board of РJSC EMAlliance

Nowadays thermal power engineering plays the key role in electric power generation in the world. Thermal power engineering will keep dominating position in foreseeable future. Therefore, future power engineering and power machine building will depend to great extent on sustainable reduction of environmental impact from thermal power plants in Russia and worldwide.

General assessment of ecological compatibility of thermal power plants is based significantly on fuel breakdown. Generally, coal dominates in world’s fuel breakdown for TPPs. In Russia fuel breakdown is different but Anatoly Chubays, head of RAO UES, says, “gas share in heat generation will be reduced – let’s say, we’ll have to do it, while coal share will go up. According to the long-term development programme of power engineering in Russia, coal share in thermal power engineering will be increased from 23 % to 32 % or from 130 to 200-225 million ton of coal per year. When gas share goes down due to the increased share of coal in the fuel breakdown, we will see environmental deterioration and increased emission of carbon dioxide in Russia.”

To reject "ecological liberalism"

Extensive programme of installation of new power plants in Russia requires the revision of federal environmental policy and, first of all, stricter environmental requirements shall be established for power plant operation which means a challenge to power machine-building companies. We know, that up to now so called “fixed idea” of Russian power engineering has been sustainable growth of capacities. Very little attention has been paid to notorious “side-effect” of such sustainable growth of production.

The government plays its role taking a very liberal position, if we put it mildly, on ecological problems. Let’s compare, for example, NOx (nitric oxide) emission and SOx (sulphur oxide) emission standards in Russia and EU. Russian standards for NOx emission (depending on TPP capacity, fuel type and ash handling system) are within the range 300 to 640 mg/m3, while Europe has a general standard of 200 mg/m3. We can see even greater difference between SOx emission standards: 700 to 1200 mg/m3 in Russia and the same strict value of 200 mg/m3 in EU.

Even though you are not a great expert in this field, you will come to the conclusion: in case of adherence to such “flexible” standards in Russia in the foreseeable future, any good environmental initiatives of officials will be destroyed.

Meanwhile, not only EU with environmental concerns but also China carry out the strict federal monitoring of dangerous emissions from power plants to be in compliance with new requirements. Both in Europe and China, particular laws give definite dates to new power plants, starting from these dates the improved environmental standards shall be strictly kept. As for existing power plants, they have an additional time period to adjust the operation in accordance with new standards. Every violator is liable to big fines and other penal measures of financial and legal nature. It is worth mentioning that the general federal monitoring of compliance with emission standards is carried out on continuous basis in EU and China and emissions standards are getting stricter in the course of time.

After Russia has at last ratified the Kioto Agreement, we have no other way but active involvement in this process: to execute the Agreement within the Russian territory, appropriate measures shall be taken to increase efficiency of fuel used.

Are Russian power machine-builders ready for new challenges in environmental protection? In my opinion, the answer to this partly rhetorical question shall be positive.

Anatoly Chubays mentioned in one of his recent speeches that “Russia is under threat of environmental deterioration in thermal power engineering and the only way of compensation is to implement actively new technologies of fuel combustion such as combined cycle plant of efficiency about 58 % and coal boilers with circulating fluidized bed.”

Stimulation of this innovation process brings no benefits only to those Russian manufacturers who produce the TPP’s main equipment and feel comfortable, when using out-of-date processes of combustion and purification due to the current “liberal” standards for dangerous emissions.

On the contrary, Russian leading power machine-building companies, such as JSC EMAlliance, consider stricter environmental standards as great help in further technological development. According to JSC EMAlliance strategy, one of priority lines is cooperation with the leading engineering companies from other countries for purchase of advanced manufacturing technologies for TPP/CCPP, etc. in compliance with European strict environmental standards. Therefore, lobbying for stricter Russian environmental laws meets definitely the economic interests of our holding: in case of appropriate revision of standards, EMAlliance will become a key player in the local machine-building market as a manufacturer of equipment in line with the new environmental standards. To be more precise, we shall say “intellectual lobbying” which implies that interests of a particular company agree completely with interests of the whole community.

Profitable waste

Another important aspect of environmental protection is waste incineration which I’d like to discuss as a separate issue. In Europe as well as some countries of Asia and North America there are a lot of waste incineration plants and, besides their main tasks, many of these plants meet part of the growing demand of population for electric power. For example, waste incineration plant of the state-of-the-art technologies is located in the centre of Vienne, it burns most part of municipal waste and generates thermal power for several districts of the Austrian capital.

In Russia effective combustion technologies are still to be proved by practice. However, Russian big cities are very interested in implementation of such technologies. Yury Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow, says that Moscow waste incineration plants shall burn up to 90 % municipal waste to 2011. We do not speak about a cheap way of power production, first of all, this instrument is a cheap way of waste disposal. Considering available latent expenses, in case of government participation, waste incineration plants become profitable business.

Obviously, new waste incineration technologies in Russia is only one example demonstrating the great opportunities given to this country due to the expected changeover to environmental friendly economy. As one of the biggest manufacturers of the main thermal power equipment, EMAlliance has now the required experience and know-how of design and construction of new power plants with state-of-the-art “clean” technologies. In our opinion, changeover to clean technologies is urgent as provision of the accelerated growth of power engineering and Russian economy in general.

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