Innovations in Housing and Communal Services to Increase Real Incomes of the Russian Population

Abstract

The article analyzes innovative technologies for heating residential buildings as an opportunity to solve the problems of housing and communal services in the country and a way to increase the real income of the population. The methods of statistical data analysis, the logical method, and the method of mathematical modeling are used. The problem under study is that the Russian economy has been experiencing a decline in real incomes for a long period of time. Coronavirus restrictions have exacerbated the existing trends. At the same time, a significant share of the expenses of Russians is the payment for utilities. Over the past 10 years, the cost of heating has risen by 80%. The lag of the Russian energy sector from the world indicators is due to several reasons: the low energy efficiency class of houses, significant wear and tear of heating networks, functional shortcomings of centralized heating, the lack of necessary federal and regional legislative acts, and the lack of private investment. At the same time, the centralized heating system has a number of unresolved problems related to the monopoly position of the industry: significant wear of pipelines of heat networks and heat generating equipment; limitations of the maximum temperature in the cold period; systematic exceeding of the value according to the temperature schedule in the warm period; poor quality of hot water supply in the winter period; late start of heating in the early cold; obsolete and extremely dangerous method of testing heat networks. It becomes obvious that there is a need for a radical modernization of the housing and communal sector with the introduction of fundamentally new heating systems and the development of energysaving technologies in the design, construction, and major repairs of residential buildings. The economic calculation of the use of an “Electro-converter heating system” on the example of a panel house of the 507 series showed that the annual savings in heating costs will be 79.5%. The payback period of the project is 11 years. The use of innovative systems of this type in the construction of new homes will pay off the investment much faster. The most acceptable mechanism for implementing such a project may be a public-private partnership. The use of public-private partnerships in the form of concession agreements in the construction of energy-efficient residential buildings and the introduction of innovative heating systems will create favorable conditions for the large-scale introduction of energy-saving technologies, which will have a positive impact on cost savings when paying for heating services and increase real incomes of the population.