The year 2025 has intensified the trend of a growing electricity shortage in Russia. Due to industrial, residential, and municipal demand exceeding the total generation capacity of all power plants, by October this year, the deficit in the power grid had already reached 25 GW.
Among the main causes, the most significant is the imbalance between rising consumption and the slow development of infrastructure.
Most of Russia’s thermal power generation assets, which have been in operation for more than 30 years, are heavily worn out—over 70 percent of all generating equipment. As a result, transmission lines are overloaded, and local outages and failures have become commonplace. The most vulnerable regions include Kamchatka and Krasnoyarsk Krais, the Magadan and Sakhalin Oblasts, the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and the North Caucasus—areas not connected to Russia’s Unified Energy System.
Western sanctions imposed for the invasion of Ukraine have added further pressure, cutting Russia off from modern energy equipment, software, and technologies. As a result, modernization of the grid and the adoption of energy-efficient solutions remain out of reach for the country’s energy sector.
Despite the Russian government’s attempts to stabilize the energy system—such as offering financial compensation or bill discounts for voluntarily reducing consumption during peak hours, and disconnecting non-critical users—the growing electricity deficit points to a systemic crisis in Russia’s energy industry. While the lion’s share of the state budget continues to be spent on the war, both the economy and the social sphere are not only suffering but steadily deteriorating.
