The head of Sberbank, German Gref, speaking at the Gaidar Forum, noted that the oil age is over, because there have been radical changes in consumption. "The era of hydrocarbons is in the past. Just like the Stone Age ended not because they ran out of stones, the oil age is also over," he noted.
According to Gref, China is actively developing alternative energy sources, and in the coming years its installed capacity of power stations will amount to 560 GW, "by comparison, this is 2.5 times more than the entire installed capacity of the Russian Federation."
The head of Sberbank forecast that China will soon begin to consume "up to 45% less traditional sources of energy." "This is our coal, which we develop and supply in large volumes, and continue to invest a lot in coal intended for the Chinese market. And hydrocarbons," the head of Sberbank stated.
According to Gref, the rest of the oil age will last for ten years, "until the entire infrastructure for electric vehicles will be deployed to the proper degree." That is why Russia should "change all government systems, primarily education, from kindergartens to universities," in order to adapt to the new conditions. "Welcome to the future!" Gref said.
The director of the Institute of Economics of Natural Monopolies of RANHiGS, Sergey Repetyuk, in an interview with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, agreed with the head of Sberbank. "This is evidenced by the development of the world economy. It is clear that demand for hydrocarbons is decreasing, and the supply is pretty large. And I think that the demand in the future is unlikely to grow at the same rate as supply. So the words of Gref are sufficiently substantiated," he pointed out.
"Alternative energy is really developing. Such an energy sector as the network economy will no longer be a natural monopoly in the near future, due to the significant development of technologies and alternative energy," he added.
