Any crisis not only puts its subject in a hopeless situation, but also gives a chance to start everything from scratch, that is, to rebuild what was destroyed, not repeating the previous one, but in a new way.. Now, when the brutal war is not slowing down, society and the authorities have a chance to rethink how we lived before and restore the country's infrastructure, economy and social relations on a fundamentally new basis..
Today, the first issue on the agenda after the war, of course, is winter.. For Ukrainians, it does not last 90 days, as President Volodymyr Zelensky says, but twice as much - from mid-October to mid-April. This is the time when people need to heat their homes, schools, offices, in short, everything.
Key issues of warmth in your own home.
There are fundamental (problem! ) questions that we must answer if we look into the future of the country's post-war reconstruction.
First: district heating is a social service or a type of business activity? If it is a service, then the state must provide heat for the entire population using methods available to it, if the second, then the state does not interfere in contractual relations between heat suppliers and consumers. The first set the tariffs they want, while the second pay as much as they can, or... they don’t get heating - this is a market, gentlemen!
There are two obvious factors that determine the answer to this question.. On the one hand, a person in Ukraine cannot spend the winter without heating his home, on the other hand, in the district heating system, the service is provided by a monopolist, a person cannot find another supplier. Moreover, the consumer, even if he wants to, cannot disconnect from this service - this is how the legislation is written. Here are all the signs of an imposed service, if very rude - racketeering by thermal workers "
It must be admitted that not only heat supply, but almost all public services are provided by local monopolists, but our legislation does not recognize this obvious fact, and the authorities are trying to regulate relations in the housing and communal services sector, not paying attention to their monopoly nature.
The second problematic issue, at first glance, seems to be technical, but in fact it is of a basic nature: how much heat energy do we actually consume Imagine what a customer will think if a store sells sausage without weighing it on a scale, or unwinds a cable without measuring its length.? Think they are being robbed! But when buying such an expensive product as a gigacalorie, which costs at least UAH 1,600 (at pre-war gas prices), the buyer considers this to be in the order of things - this is how he was taught over the long years of providing district heating services. At best, he will be given part of the check, for which the entire collective farm, that is, an apartment building, which has a heat meter, must pay.
But that's not all. Until recently, not all boiler houses had such output meters, that is, it was not known how much heat they supplied to consumers. We still do not have meters at the entrance to heating stations (CHP), that is, we do not know how much heat is lost “on the way”, and these losses are also included in the tariff... Thus, before talking about the “digitalization of the country” (the word.
The third problematic question: are we paying too much for heat According to official statistics, supposedly not much - 14-15% of total household expenses, but there are nuances. Firstly, urban and rural families are heaped together here, but the last of the utilities have only electricity and gas.. Secondly, these statistics do not take into account seasonal fluctuations in expenses, because in winter in cities they grow several times, for many families utility bills increase to 50% of income, and for pensioners they can even exceed the size of pensions.. In the end, you need to take into account the structure of expenses - in Ukraine, food costs range from 50 to 60%, while in Europe it is 10-15%.
As a result, after buying food and paying utility bills, Ukrainians are left with 1-3% for such expenses as education, healthcare, or recreation and culture.. As a consequence and evidence that our heat tariffs are not adequate to the incomes of the population, in cities with centralized heating, it has become common practice that people do not pay extra for heating in winter, and pay off winter debts in summer - this is clearly shown by payment statistics. Thus, the high level of utility bills, and the lion's share of them is for heating, is critical for Ukrainians, it hinders the development and restoration of human potential.
Without solving these three key problems, it is not worth hoping for the creation of a fundamentally new efficient system of centralized and individual heat supply.. Probably, based on them, it is necessary to form strategic goals for recovery. So they are next.
Development of a system of relations between suppliers and consumers of heat, which does not allow thermal companies to abuse their monopoly position.
Creation of a total and transparent (available to everyone through the network) accounting system for the production, transportation and consumption of thermal energy.
Reducing the share of household expenses in Ukraine for utility bills, primarily for heat supply.
And what does the Plan for the Restoration of Ukraine, which is now being prepared by the government, offer us
It can be said that the best minds of the thermal industry (who were found) took up the problem of providing heat, but the results of their work raise many doubts and questions..
Do I need to heat in the summer?
It would seem that the question is somewhat humorous, but the goal of the plan (in the section " - BUT. Not to mention the stylistic weakness of such a formulation of the goal, the question arises: why heat an apartment or house in the summer heat?
Obviously, the goal should have been written out more correctly, but the farther into the forest... To achieve this goal, strategic goals are determined, the first 1. 1: " It is planned to spend UAH 60 billion to achieve it, the deadline for achieving it is December 7, 2022. We again forget about style and ask: weren’t “all citizens” provided with heating before So where will the UAH 60 billion be spent over the remaining few months On the homeless?
Next strategic objective 1. 2 is defined as follows: " The period of achievement is 2023-2025, the budget is UAH 210 billion. The goal is correct (if you again do not pay attention to the style), but what is meant? It turns out that reducing natural gas consumption by 20%, reducing losses in heating networks by up to 12% and “the fuel efficiency of thermal energy sources is at least up to 92%”.
Here the question arises: what to take as a starting point? It is known that thermal energy producers reduced gas consumption by 24% in 2021 (! As for heat losses in networks, any mayor of a city with a centralized heating system will tell you that in order to achieve an indicator of 12% of losses, 80–90% of heating networks must be shifted, and this is a huge amount of money and years of work. (Recently, only in Kyiv there was a planned annual replacement of tens of kilometers of heating networks. Over the past three years, the most problematic 320 km of the existing 2.5 thousand have already been replaced.
The third indicator of achievement of the goal 1. 2 - " In practice, this means that in the vast majority of CHPPs, TPPs and simple boiler houses, it is necessary to replace old generation plants with new ones, which, accordingly, are very expensive.. Is it possible to do this before 2026 and what will be the price, the question is open.
Strategic Goal 1. 3 is defined as follows: “Heat energy in the heat supply systems of Ukraine is obtained from different energy sources”. A very strange statement of the question, since such a situation is already taking place.. Gas, coal, fuel oil, electricity have long been used in district heating systems, and in the private sector - biofuels, pellets, firewood, and finally. The indicator of achieving the goal is "
As for the transition to solar or wind heating systems, Ukraine is not Israel, where almost every roof has a barrel of water that is heated in the sun, but this is not at all for heating, just to wash. In the overall energy balance of Israel, the share of energy from renewable sources was 4.9% in 2009, and by 2020 it should have grown to 10%, but not to 50%.! As a result, we have in the strategic goal 1. 3 a bunch of good intentions, but they are all very far-fetched and unrealistic (not to say fantastic).
Conclusion: what the working group presented in the Ukraine Recovery Plan is in fact a set of operational goals, that is, second-order goals for which strategic goals have not been defined. If we do not see the forests for the trees, then we are doomed to wander for a long time in three pines, not finding a way out..