​Residents of the Irkutsk region urge the president to impose differential tariffs for miners

What’s new? A group of residents from the Irkutsk region sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a request to impose differential tariffs on electricity for local miners. According to Lenta.ru, the appeal refers to the critical situation with illegal cryptocurrency mining in the region. Larisa Sokolova, the Professor of the Department of State and Municipal Management Russia, Baikal State University, sent the letter, and it was registered in the reception room of the President.

Lenta.ru’s material

What else does the publication report? Residents of the Irkutsk region complained about emergency power outages. Such incidents cause alarm among the population and are associated with the activities of illegal miners, creating a large load on the power grid.

According to Sokolova, “when household electricity is used for other purposes, the load on distribution grids is significantly higher, emergency shutdowns and even fires occur, and as a result, a huge number of families across the region remain without light and heat, electric appliances break down and property is damaged as a result of fires.”

The petition signed by two thousand Irkutsk residents mentions that Governor Igor Kobzev earlier sent a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak in which he emphasized the need to impose differential tariffs and expressed concern about the situation. Then the authorities adopted a resolution allowing to set of tariffs in accordance with the volume of consumption.

Despite this, the situation in the region has not changed, and the leadership of the Irkutsk region has changed its own position and opposed the change in tariff regulation in the region.

“The introduction of a system of differentiated electricity tariffs could be an effective opportunity to reduce the load on household networks and begin the systematic, progressive development of power grids in those regions where electricity is now a critical condition for people’s livelihoods,” the letter’s authors summarized.

Earlier, Kobzev spoke about the readiness to allocate areas in the north of the region for the construction of mining farms in the case the federal law on cryptocurrency mining is adopted.

In August 2022, the Irkutsk region and Khakassia announced the introduction of a differentiated payment system for electricity for individuals based on the principle “the more you consume, the more expensive each kilowatt hour.” In early December, Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Snikkars said that by the end of 2022, the share of miners in power consumption in Russia could grow by one and a half to two times.

In 2021, the Irkutsk region became one of the nine most popular regions of the Russian Federation for mining.

For how the mining industry works in Russia, as well as attempts to regulate cryptocurrencies in the country, read GetBlock Magazine’s special materials.