Today, one of the pressing problems for any economy is the problem of energy supply. More than half of the countries in the world consume energy. This makes the economies of countries energy dependent. In addition, this explains the structure of costs for production. Rising prices for energy resources require significant acquisition costs and exacerbate the overall economic situation. For countries that do not have enough energy reserves and the possibilities of attracting their renewal are extremely limited, increasing energy efficiency is becoming the most important vector of economic movement. Energy efficiency, lower costs for the production of electricity, are becoming an important factor in economic growth.
There were two strategic directions for its increase. The first is to reduce production costs by increasing the efficiency of the very consumption of resources at TPPs and boiler houses for the production of electric heat. The second is an increase in the energy efficiency of all industry and agriculture.
To assess what are the costs of production in the electric power industry, and what is the efficiency of energy production at thermal power plants, an indicator such as the estimated specific consumption of fuel used per unit of energy supplied is used. This indicator is used to compare the cost-effectiveness, performance of various power plants. For example, for thermal stations with subcritical steam parameters, the specific consumption is 365 g of standard fuel / kWh, with supercritical parameters - 320 g of standard fuel / kWh, for modern combined cycle plants - 265 g of standard fuel / kWh. For electric networks, energy efficiency is determined by the amount of electricity loss in the networks, which currently amounts to about 11% of the energy supplied to the network of the energy system and can be expressed in the efficiency of transmission and distribution of electricity. Similarly, the energy efficiency of heating networks is determined, the losses in which are approximately 12%.
For the energy system as a whole, there is no universal criterion of what the costs of production in the electric power industry should be, what energy efficiency indicator to use, which characterizes the efficiency of using the supplied primary energy that this type of fuel contains. It seems that for this purpose, the specific fuel consumption indicator for all power plants attributable to energy supplied to consumers can be used.
There is a direct correlation between the growth rate of energy intensity and the rate of electricity consumption and the magnitude of GDP. It follows from it that the dynamics of changes in the energy intensity of the gross product is determined both by the rate and growth in the use of energy resources, and by the rate of economic development of the economy. If the growth rate of energy consumption is ahead of the growth rate of GDP, then the cost of production in the electric power industry is growing, energy intensity is growing, and if the ratio is the opposite, then energy intensity is decreasing.
Thus, to ensure the growth of energy efficiency of the economy, it is necessary that the rate of economic development, expressed in GDP growth, be ahead of the rate of growth of energy consumption. Two contradictory trends in the dynamics of energy consumption should be noted. On the one hand, an increase in the energy-labor ratio of labor as an important factor in increasing its productivity, and on the other, a decrease in energy intensity as a result of the current policy in the field of energy efficiency.