Business news

Plans to subsidize conversion of Belarusian households to electric heating, cooking

Viktor Karankevich talks to reporters

MINSK, 10 April (BelTA) – Plans are in place to compensate one fifth of the investment a household needs to switch to electricity for heating, hot water, and cooking needs. The compensation is stipulated by the relevant draft presidential decree, BelTA learned from Belarusian Energy Minister Viktor Karankevich.

The decree has been drafted to encourage citizens to switch their detached single-family houses to electricity for the sake of heating, hot water, and cooking.

The draft decree specifies that municipal budgets will be used to compensate some of the money such a conversion requires.

The government is ready to compensate 20% of the conversion cost up to 40 base amounts (one base amount equals Br27 right now). The compensation will be allocated as a one-time subsidy.

Viktor Karankevich specified that the compensation will be available to the already existing single-family houses only if centralized natural gas supply and centralized heating are unavailable.

In 2019 citizens submitted about 10,900 applications for switching detached single-family houses to electricity. “In other words, we see a large number of families willing to make the switch,” Viktor Karankevich said. “About 3,300 applications for switching to electricity were submitted in Q1 2020.”

Making state support available one time only is the idea. If a specific populated locality is connected to the natural gas grid or if citizens have already received preferential loans, they have already been granted state support. In order to enable equal conditions in places where gas networks are not available, citizens will be granted the compensation as an alternative to natural gas.

As for new construction, the draft presidential decree provides for building power lines with a capacity margin to houses that intend to use electricity for heating and hot water from the very start.

The Belarusian energy minister is convinced that the implementation of the presidential decree will allow increasing electricity consumption in the country. It will also improve living standards for citizens, primarily those, who live in the countryside where centralized gas supply and heating are not available.

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