The Ministry of Energy of Russia proposed an increase in electricity tariffs for miners cryptocurrency. As the head of the department, Nikolai Shulginov, said, they should not consume electricity at prices for the population, RBC reports.
“We work out a question in the electric power industry. To maintain the reliability and quality of energy, we consider it necessary to eliminate the possibility of consumption of electricity by tariffs for the population,” the minister stressed.
Schulginov clarified that it is necessary to divide the tariffs so that miners cannot take advantage of the reduced prices for consumers and did not degrade the provisions, since otherwise it will have to increase the cross-subsidy volume that is unacceptable.
Earlier, the governor of the Irkutsk region Igor Kobzev complained to the Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Nomaku, who oversees the fuel and energy complex, cryptocurrency miners. He noted that in 2021, electricity consumption by the population in the Russian region will exceed the level of last year by 159 percent. At the same time, electricity balances, according to the area development program at 2022-2026, provided for the growth of energy consumption in 2021 by only 2.8 percent for the past year. A quarter of the total volume of electricity consumption by the population is 1.4 percent of households in the region, the head of the region notes.