DUSHANBE, October 20, 2008, Asia-Plus  -- Georgy Petrov, the head of the hydropower lab at Tajik Institute for Water Problems, Hydropower and Ecology, considers that hydropower is not as economically efficient as it seems. 

He remarked this at the third conference on the Eurasian integration issues in Astana, Kazakhstan on October 17, according to Kazakhstan’s Kazakhstan Segodnya (Kazakhstan Today).

 According to him, to raise efficiency of hydropower it is necessary to construct not separate facilities but cascade of power plants.  

 “Therefore, when we got information that some Kazakh companies are going build a 150MW power station costing $150 million in Tajikistan it is clear that they did not to estimate economic effects,” Petrov was cited as saying.  

He noted that the second reason for poor development of hydropower and integration was in relationships between the countries of region in the water sector. 

“As a whole, this issue was solved by a 1998 agreement on Syr Darya [River] that determined the main scheme of rendering water supply services with delivery of electrical power and compensation of losses; however, no mechanism was developed that would estimate all this,” the Tajik expert said.     

Petrov considers it necessary to return to the 1998 agreement and work out the mechanism.  “First of all, the mechanism should set prices.  Today, the price, unfortunately, plays an independent role.  Physical volumes should be determined, while value is just constructed in this case.  The second point is to determine the compensation volumes themselves; these are losses connected with transition from national to regional regime,” the Tajik specialist said.