Cost of electricity and gas in Kazakhstan to keep rising: Nazarbayev

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev said that the cost of electricity and gas in Kazakhstan would continue growing, Tengrinews reports.

President spoke after the government reported on implementation of the state-run program of innovative and industrial development: “The cost of electricity will grow, whether you want it or not. The cost of gas will also grow and approach the world prices because it is not possible to operate otherwise. Hence, we need to save. Energy-saving equipment is the future.”

The President cited South Korea that introduced special technologies to greatly reduce energy losses during transmission and distribution. "We have not addressed this issue yet. We are losing up to 20 percent. This equals to the energy generated by several big power stations. While South Korea loses only 7-8 percent during transmission. This is thanks to the advanced equipment in their cables and networks," Nazarbayev said.

Electric power transmission and distribution losses are losses in transmission between sources of supply and points of distribution and in the distribution to consumers, including pilferage.

Nazarbayev called to closely examine the issue and find ways to improve energy transmission networks and to get factories to become more energy efficient.

"This is your task. I understand that it takes new equipment, new transformers to achieve it. We have to deal with it. It is not power plants that we need to build. We need to learn to effectively use what we already have. This is one thing. The other thing is that we have to get plants and other enterprises to use energy more efficiently. This means that they will have to install new equipment. This is what industrialization is about," Nazarbayev said.

Reporting by Altynai Zhumzhumina, writing by Dinara Urazova, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina