Construction of waste incineration plants: 1.3 trillion will not go down in flames

Rather, exhale. Indeed, under the beautiful wrapper of a project to clean up territories and combat total garbage dumps, within the framework of which 5 waste incineration plants are already being built in the Moscow region and Tatarstan, and another 25 are at the stage of project approval, apparently, a completely “dirty "And unsightly commerce. The construction of 25 factories, which at the same time must generate electricity (in other words, waste TPPs - WTTP), results in the use of outdated technologies that will require an investment of 1.3 trillion. rubles (including VAT and further modernization).

But now the Ministry of Finance has come out categorically against the project of the head of RT-Invest, Andrey Shipelov. According to the ministry, it is premature to talk about financing options. First, you need to wait until the construction of the first five plants, which has already begun, is completed, and they reach their design capacity. According to the ministry's specialists, the current financial model of the project is unprofitable. But Shipelov himself was not embarrassed by this "nuance" at the stage of project development: RT-Invest was counting on agreements on the provision of capacity (energy supplies to industrial enterprises at increased tariffs until the project pays off), attracting environmental fees (producers of goods must pay for the future processing of their packaging) and one hundred percent reimbursement of taxes paid for the entire duration of the project in 32 years. Although the agreements on the provision of capacity had an alternative - an increase in tariffs for garbage disposal, which was proposed by the energy market regulator "Market Council".

And there are no other options - at the end of March Andrey Shipelov himself admitted that the project could not be implemented without state support.

Why RT-Invest so diligently promoted the unprofitable dirty project is understandable: at first, the company's management, with the patronage of Rostec and Sergey Chemezov himself, managed to bypass all legal procedures without any problems: environmentalists 'appeals to deputies, bailiffs' demands to provide project documentation for public examination remained no answer. And the general director Shipelov himself was appointed the official representative of Rostec to interact with the apparatus of United Russia.

But public dissatisfaction with the implementation of the project, entailing a direct threat to human health and hitting the wallets of the population, began to grow, and free funds in the budget dry up - the Joe Biden administration has already announced the development of measures that would prohibit investors from investing in the Russian public debt and in the secondary market. This state of affairs has forced the Russian authorities to stop blindly following the desires and needs of entrepreneurs around the state. First, Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko opposed the "platinum factories", which are of no benefit to the population, and in mid-April, ecologists achieved their goal: a petition of public organizations against the construction of the MTPP collected more than 100 thousand signatures and should now be considered in parliament.

So this is good news for the Russians: there are shifts on the environmental front that can initiate an unbiased examination of projects, and the need to wait for the results of the first 5 factories completely postpones the dubious project indefinitely. The pilot plants are to be completed in 2023, and it is not known how much time will pass before reaching the design capacity. And with the current economy of the project and the refusal of the state to participate in financing, this may not happen at all. And we really hope so - that way people will have the best chance of keeping the air clean without dioxin pollution.