The paper overviews the contemporary state of Russia's heat supply systems and fuel consumption within its centralized part, the structure of heat consumption by economic sectors and types of industrial con sumers. As shown, the centralized heat supply systems, providing the major part of country's economy with low temperature heat, have heat losses and accident rate at a critical level. The state of decentralized heat sup ply systems of low rise buildings is not covered by national statistics at all. A second paper on the prospects and development of Russia's heat supply systems will be published in a subsequent issue.

Goals and Features of the Long-term Development of the Russian FECThe fuel and energy complex of Russia has a number of features, which seriously influence the scale and pattern of energy consumption, the economics of energy resources production, and domestic prices. Some of the more important factors are:-continuing depopulation against the background of progressively complex demographic characteristics; -Russia's vast territory, which makes the transportation component in many ways the determinant of the cost-effectiveness of energy use by Russian consumers, reliable export ties being a major factor in the promotion of national energy preparedness; -Russia is the coldest country in the world. Therefore, reliable meeting of its heating needs is a significant factor in the building of the energy balance of Russia and its regions;-the maintenance of the outdated engineering and technological composition and structure of the energy complex (especially with respect to its natural monopolies), which evolved in another, nonmarket economic environment;-low reliability and high maintenance costs of obsolete technologies and worn-out equipment, including energy-generating equipment;-persisting disparity of fuel and energy prices, which do not meet market conditions and differ from world market prices in terms of level and structure; -persisting potential for the appearance of dangerous hotbeds of social tension if energy supply and energy prices are not brought coordinated with people's incomes; and -greater dependence of the national economy on the energy complex as the supplier of fuel and energy, one of the principal sources of tax and currency returns.These features determine the goals for rationalizing the long-term development prospects for the Russian FEC for the period to 2030 as follows:-meeting the nation's internal energy needs is the primary task of the FEC for the whole forecast period;-market factors are determining ones in choosing energy production, transportation and utilization technologies;-energy export is still very important for the nation's economic development throughout the longterm period;-control of the security and reliability of energy supply is a top priority task;-rising role of electrification as a the most significant factor in labor productivity growth and ensuring energy comfort of the population; -rising role of government regulation with respect to environmental control and occupational and life safety; and -the energy intensity of gross domestic product must be reduced thanks to the alteration of the pattern of production in favor of industries with greater value added and lower energy intensity and the mastering of innovative and energy-saving technologies. FEC Growth Forecasting Scenariosand Instruments Scenarios of Russia's Socioeconomic Development. Russia's possible economic development is represented by two scenarios, which were developed at the Institute of Economic Forecasting [1]. Key parameters of the scenarios are listed in Table 1.Scenario 1 (inertial) assumes the continu...

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Possible uses of hydrogen produced from natural gas in fuel cells in decentralized power and heat supply systems are considered. Conditions for the competitiveness of the new technology compared to centralized and decentralized systems based on heat-and-power miniplants with gas-turbine and gas-piston engines are defined. Fuel cell-based systems that use natural gas as fuel are shown to be not energy-saving technologies, although they help reduce the discharges of carbon dioxide and other contaminants to the environment. Largescale application of fuel cells in decentralized energy-saving systems is only possible if their cost is reduced below $100 per kilowatt.